


Can You Still Hear Me

by BigDykeEnergy



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: (captain hammer voice) the darkness is the closet, (sort of), Canon-Compliant, Character Study, Coming Out, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Radiant Garden Restoration Committee, Soriku - Freeform, background strifehart, gay revelations, medium burn?, not long enough to be a true slow burn but, out Leon, rated T so cid can say the f word, riku & leon friendship, riku-centric, set between KH2 and 3D
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22701583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigDykeEnergy/pseuds/BigDykeEnergy
Summary: No more borders around, or below, or above, so long as you champion the ones you love...Riku felt as though he had been waiting his entire life to become a keyblade master—ever since the handle slid into his grip, ever since a tall, kind stranger had beckoned him to take it.With the Mark of Mastery exam looming, Riku had never felt less deserving. He had shut his heart away for so long, he barely remembered the sound of its call—and as he struggled to learn to listen again, he began to understand just how much he still had to reckon with…and just how much it would ask of him.---Post-KH2 and pre-3D, Riku and Sora spend a while training with the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee in preparation for their exam.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 154
Kudos: 384





	1. I Thought I'd Lost You

**Author's Note:**

> [ ](https://ibb.co/7CsLgdM)   
>  [](https://imgbb.com/)   
> 

“Hey, Riku,” Sora asked, “do you remember when we first decided to see the worlds?"

Riku glanced at him from the corner of his eye. The dusky orange of the setting sun painted him in vibrant color.

Riku looked out across the sparkling water. “Yeah,” he answered, “’Course I do.”

“Why didn’t we?”

The surf rolled up to lap at their feet. “What do you mean?”

“We worked so hard on that raft, y’know? We were gonna sail it out past the horizon and go on a real adventure.”

Riku's chest tightened. “We were just kids.” He glanced over again. Sora’s gaze stayed fixed ahead, on the distant horizon. “Something on your mind?”

“Hmm.” Sora leaned back on his hands, tipping his chin up to the sky. “Maybe I’m just figuring some stuff out.”

Riku watched the gulls circle out over the waves. “Alright, wise guy,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to.”

Sora’s fingers brushed his knuckles, and Riku’s heart stuttered. He looked down at the sand between them, where Sora had rested a hand over his own. Riku looked up at him, stunned.

Sora’s eyes were clear and shining. “Maybe I want to,” he said quietly.

“Sora,” Riku started, the words coming out of his mouth before he could stop them, “let’s take the raft and go—just the two of us.”

Sora leaned into their hands, drawing close, and there was something steep and plummeting in Riku’s stomach. The sweep of chestnut brown hair over Sora’s forehead tickled his face, his bottomless blue eyes and galaxy of freckles filling Riku’s vision. Sora’s lips parted, sucking in a quiet breath, and Riku felt like he was standing at the edge of some great precipice, looking down.

Sora’s mouth moved, but the words were drowned out as a thunderclap exploded through the space between them, shaking through Riku’s chest with enough force to rattle his teeth.

Their hands slipped on the slick wood beneath them, and Riku found himself skidding towards the edge of the raft as rain the size of bullets pummeled down on them. He could hear Sora shouting through the din, but the sound was just another stroke in the fury of the ocean.

Before him, in the all-too-near distance, a swell like the back of a waking titan was distorting the horizon line.

Riku scrambled for purchase on the surface of the raft, colliding with Sora’s legs as he skittered backwards. His hands found the mast and he hauled himself to his feet, Sora floundering to regain his balance beside him. The sail was snapping against the furious charcoal-black of the clouds like a handkerchief caught in a hurricane, and Riku snatched the rope and looped it around his open palm, pulling it taught. He scoured the jagged horizon for the familiar shape of their island, but the world in every direction was a maelstrom of frothing whitecaps and plumes of pitch-dark cloud.

A gust of wind battered against the raft, and Riku staggered, the rope dragging through his white-knuckled grip and tearing open the calluses underneath.

Before he had time to think through their options, Sora’s icy hands were on his face.

He was soaked through to the skin, his hair black and flattened against his scalp. He blinked the torrent of water from his eyes, his mouth still moving, his voice still drowned in the roar of the storm and the sea, and then he suddenly froze, the color draining from his face. His gaze was fixed over Riku’s shoulder, at the ocean beyond.

Riku twisted in time to see the titan on the horizon blotting out the sky. Sora’s fingernails dug into his arm as the raft started to tilt under their feet.

For a moment, the din of the storm seemed to go quiet, as if it, too, had been swallowed by the gravity of the tide.

It struck the raft.

Riku was erased for a fraction of a second. The impact forced everything human out of him, the weight of the ocean squeezing him like the fist of a giant. The irresistible power of the tide tore at his limbs, sending him careening into bottomless, distant dark.

When he stopped spinning, Riku remembered that he was alive.

He opened his eyes. The saltwater burned, his vision blurred and hazy. There was only darkness in all directions.

He forced out a huff of air and watched as the bubbles clambered towards his feet, and he tried to right himself in the water to follow their desperate migration to the surface. A smear of thin light appeared over him, and he struck out for it.

Something snagged on his leg, and he thrashed against it in a panic. He peered back down into the murky depths, his blood running cold.

Inky tendrils were climbing his legs, and he struggled desperately to tear them away, but they had already wrapped around his waist and were still reaching, slithering up towards his neck. The air bubbles drifted further out of sight, the smear of light receding into nothingness as the tendrils dragged him down.

He reached out a hand for the surface, another puff of air escaping him as one of them circled his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut.

A firm grip caught his wrist. When he opened his eyes again, Sora was pulling himself close, wresting the fingers of one hand beneath the tendril at his throat.

He found Riku’s mouth with his, and a breath passed into him—not enough, but something—and then Sora’s fingers threaded into his own, the soft heat of his tongue sweeping the curve of Riku’s lip, and the tendrils tangled around him loosed into curls and dissipated into the current.

The wave that had broken over them was drawn back out by the tide, and Riku was lying on sun-warmed sand with their hands laced at his side, Sora’s worried face hovering above him.

His hand at Riku’s throat was a gentle but constant pressure. His mouth was still close enough to taste, and Riku felt the brush of his lips as he said, warm and relieved:

“I thought I’d lost you, Riku.”

He trailed his fingertips down Riku’s face and pinched his nose shut, and then he pressed his open mouth to Riku’s and breathed into him again.

Something roiling and hot writhed inside him, screaming to come up. When Sora pulled away, his silhouette was too broad, and Riku recognized the glint of golden eyes and silver hair as Ansem’s shadow fell over him. The hand at his nose squeezed hard enough to make his eyes water, and the fingers locked into his his slipped free and clamped firmly over his mouth.

Riku grappled at Ansem’s wrists, but his body felt like it was made of lead. The world started to swim around him.

Ansem’s voice, lower, harder, colder, murmured through his haze.

“Oh, Riku…I thought I’d lost you.”

The thing squirming inside him seized up against Ansem’s hand, and he jerked sideways and vomited seawater and inky black tendrils onto the sand.

Riku jolted awake. His heart was hammering against his ribs, the neck of his t-shirt soaked through with sweat. He stared at the ceiling, his grip on reality gradually rebooting.

After a moment, he draped an arm over his eyes and pulled in a long, slow breath.

_You’re awake and alive,_ he promised himself.

_Sora is awake and alive. You’re in Radiant Garden. You’re with friends. You’ll see him soon._

_Ansem is gone._

_You’re okay._

_You’re okay._

_You’re okay._

* * *

When they were kids, falling for Sora was just another thread in the fabric of Riku’s life.

Paopu trees flowered vibrant reds in wintertime, the tide carried their footprints away as it dawdled out in the afternoon, and Riku loved Sora: simple as that. It was a constant, quiet thrum inside him, like a second heartbeat. The world was in black and white until Sora gave it color. Everything around him came alive—including Riku.

Even as they grew, they were inseparable. They loafed on the beaches, tussled in the sand until they were out of breath, made impossible plans to do impossible things. The future was one bright, endless adventure, never a question in their minds that they would face it together. The thrum grew, too, until Riku could feel its current buzzing under his skin whenever Sora was with him, whenever Riku so much as _thought_ of him. Why wouldn’t he want to be with him all the time? Why wouldn’t he do anything—anything in the world, in all the worlds—to protect him?

Impressing him was Riku’s only mission in life. Every scoff or grin was a tiny success, every flashy display or elaborate challenge a plea for Sora’s attention, and Riku thrived on it. When Sora’s eyes were on him, he could do anything.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise when Sora’s eyes went elsewhere. People gravitated to him the way plants grew toward the sun. They made other friends, and then another real friend, and Riku made room for her without even realizing it had happened. Kairi nestled so seamlessly into his heart, he didn’t even notice how important she was to him until he noticed how important she was to Sora.

The thrum in Riku’s chest started to feel like a bad joke. He started to wonder why looking at Kairi sometimes made his heart feel like a weight too heavy to carry. He started to wonder why he didn’t feel about her the way he felt about Sora—why he didn’t feel about _anyone_ the way he felt about Sora.

He thought: _Isn’t she important to me? Don’t I love her, too?_

Then he thought: _What if I love him too much?_

Was it normal, to look at his best friend like he was the only person in the world? What if Sora didn’t feel the same? What if he loved Kairi more? She was the easiest thing in the world to love. She was just like Sora, like a sunbeam all year round.

Riku was brash, and reckless, and competitive—he wasn’t like _either_ of them. The only thing they all had in common was loyalty, and Riku couldn’t even get that right. And given the choice, why would Sora ever choose him?

Of course, it took him another three years to realize what it meant to want Sora to make that choice, and choose him.

By then, everything was so messed up, his feelings kind of took a back seat.

* * *

Riku’s disorientation lingered over breakfast, where he was barely listening to Leon's morning briefing. He was mostly watching Yuffie peel the crusts off her toast and trying not to think at all.

He tuned back in when Leon gestured vaguely in his direction. “Riku, are you up for a patrol?”

Riku wiped a sleeve absently over his mouth. “Sure,” he said.

Leon nodded, flipping through the log book on the table in front of him. “Sora should be landing sometime tonight. We can put together a training plan for your exam once we’re all together.” He scribbled something into the margins of the book. “In the meantime, I got word of some heartless activity by the old lab—we should make sure the security system is handling it. There might be clean-up.”

“Word from Cloud?” Yuffie implored, her mouth turning up at the corner.

Leon rolled his eyes. “Who else?” he muttered.

She scooted her chair an inch or two in Leon’s direction. “How’s it going with him?”

Leon stiffened. He crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s not.”

Yuffie nudged him warmly with her shoulder. “Don’t be like that, Squall. He’s your type, and I know for a fact he plays for your team.”

Riku froze, his coffee mug halfway to his lips.

“First of all,” Leon said flatly, “he is _not_ my type.” He brushed off Yuffie’s hand. “You should worry less about my love life and more about your own. Or better yet, worry about helping Tifa clear the debris from the library.” With that, he rose from the table and headed for the door.

“Touchy,” Yuffie muttered.

Riku stared at the threshold where Leon had disappeared, his mouth dry.

“Uh,” he said.

“I know, I know, it’s none of my business,” Yuffie sighed, resting a weary elbow on the table and swirling the splash of juice left in her glass. “He’s been celibate so long I’m starting to worry he’ll turn to stone.”

“Leon,” Riku clarified, “is he, uh…into guys?”

Yuffie cast him a sideways look. “I thought you knew.”

Riku blinked at her. “Why would I know that? We’ve barely had one conversation since I got here. He’s not really the chatty type.”

She suddenly looked very interested in the bottom of her glass.

Riku felt a tight, panicky flutter in the pit of his stomach. He set down his mug. “I should catch up with him,” he said quickly. “Check out the heartless problem.”

He left his breakfast half-finished and made a beeline for the door.

“Hey, wait,” Yuffie called.

Riku paused at the threshold. He glanced over his shoulder at her.

“You should have a second,” she said. “Conversation, I mean. You know, get to know the guy a little.”

“Yeah,” Riku answered hastily. “Sure.”

Before she could say anything else, he was out the door.

* * *

Riku caught up with him in the bailey. Leon was leaning over the low stone wall with his blade propped at his side, his arms folded underneath him. Beyond, where the cliffside dropped away, the crumbling stone and looming spires of the vale jutted like dark bones into the rich pink of the sunrise.

The sight of it made Riku’s gut twist into knots. Walking the streets since his arrival, surrounded by the people who made their lives here, Riku had swallowed down a churning guilt. A piece of him knew that he had been used, that the damage he did while he was under Maleficent’s thumb wasn’t only his to bear. But another piece of him, the one that beckoned him to stare down the barrel and try to understand, knew that life was rarely that simple.

Sometimes, in the moments before he dropped off to sleep, he could see Radiant Garden as Kairi described it, her hands stretched towards the sky as she pried up her childhood one memory at a time: a patchwork of vivid beauty, all shimmering water and stained glass and field after field of bright, orderly flowers.

If he wanted to leave this world—any world—better than he found it, then he still had a lot to make up for.

This seemed as good a place to start as any.

Leon didn’t acknowledge his approach, but Riku leaned into the cool stone beside him anyway.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

Leon kept his eyes on the horizon. “Used to be.” He pushed away from the wall without sparing Riku so much as a passing glance. “Let’s go.”

Riku turned, but Leon was already halfway down the low stone steps, sheathing his blade over his shoulder.

At a loss for anything to say, he followed.

The damage from the collapse was worse in this area than any other, the streets around the castle abandoned. They walked in silence through the rubble, their footfalls echoing against the cavernous stone. The light refracting through the veins of quartz and sediment made the sheer cliffside seem to shift and flicker as they passed.

He still couldn’t reconcile the dry, aloof stranger with the suave and clever version Sora so enthusiastically painted. He also wasn’t sure if Leon had a problem with him. Riku wouldn’t blame him, if he did.

_Talk to him,_ whispered a quiet, urgent voice in the back of Riku’s mind. _He’s like you._

He stared at the back of Leon’s head, tugging at a loose thread on the inner seam of his pocket. “So, you…do this…often?”

Leon didn’t bother turning. “Yup.”

“Just the four of you?”

“Merlin helps out when he can. And Aerith prefers restoring histories to restoring streets.”

Riku twisted the thread around his finger and started to pull it free. “What about Cloud?”

Leon stopped abruptly, and Riku came to a stumbling halt to avoid walking face-first into his shoulder blades.

He turned, and for the first time that day—possibly for the first time, period—he looked Riku dead in the eye.

“If you’ve got something to say,” he said flatly, “go ahead and say it.”

Riku’s palms started to sweat. He held up both hands in front of him. “No, I—um.” He picked the strand of dark thread off his fingers and flicked it away, his face going hot. “Look, I’m not trying to pick a fight. Sora talks about him. I didn’t know he lived around here.”

Leon’s expression slipped from irritation into exhaustion. His shoulders relaxed.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry. Yeah, he does.”

Riku blinked, and a snort of laughter snuck up on him. “You don’t make it easy, do you?” he said.

Leon stared at him.

“Conversation,” Riku clarified.

Leon crossed his arms over his chest. The gesture was a little looser, a little more relaxed than it was before. “You’re not much of a talker, yourself,” he said.

Riku shrugged. “We can’t all be Yuffie.”

That earned him a sliver of a smile. “Come on,” Leon said, gesturing him forward.

This time, he waited for Riku to fall in step beside him.

As they rounded the corner towards the postern, there was a resonant, metallic skitter in the crevice of a looming stone wall. They exchanged a sideways glance, and Riku summoned the Way to the Dawn in a flash of light.

It was still for another few moments. A groan echoed from deep within the stone.

A surge of shadows skittered out of the dark like spiders, and Riku didn’t waste a second. He struck out in front of him in quick, pointed jabs as heartless swarmed the plaza around them, four of them bursting into dark mist under his blade. At his side, Leon was carving through the hoard in wide swaths.

A wave of silvery dusks slithered over the crest of the postern bridge, and Riku drew back his arm and hurled the Way to the Dawn in a tight arc. It struck three of them before slicing through the nearest heartless and snapping back into his hand, the space in front of him showered in bright sparks and dark mist.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the telltale glint of knife-like spines rising up from the earth between them.

The assassin breached the surface of the street like a whale coming up for air. It slashed at them with one long, serrated arm, and Riku rolled out of the way and skidded to a stop with his back to the sheer cliffside. Leon twisted in time to steel his blade against it, knocking it back, and it spun out into the open.

Riku trained the Way to the Dawn at the handful heartless that remained. “Breaking a sweat yet?” he called.

Leon speared the assassin cleanly through the center, and it fizzled out into nothingness. He flipped Riku the bird.

Riku grinned. _“Magnera!”_

A pulse of energy coursed through him, and a shimmering sphere manifested in the center of the plaza, pulling in the scattering heartless.

Something shifted in his chest.

Riku’s mind blanked. He glanced down at his keyblade, frowning, but he couldn’t pin down the shape of the feeling. He aimed at the mass of heartless gathering overhead. _“Fira!”_

This time, he could tell immediately that something was wrong. A swell of power rose in him, but it didn’t peak or taper—it just kept growing, accumulating inside him until he started to shake from the pressure. There was a lurch in him, a rush of adrenaline raising the hair on the back of his neck.

A swirling spout of fire erupted from the end of his keyblade, and it kicked back in his hand and sputtered as the flame coiled from orange to deep purple to seething, tarry black. When it finally dispelled, there was nothing left of the swarm but a streak of ash on the cobblestones.

Across the street from Riku’s childhood home, there was a steep, grassy hill. He and Sora used to sprint down it like they were racing gravity itself, their feet flying to keep up with the momentum, until their legs went out from under them and they went tumbling onto the forgiving banks of the river below. There was something thrilling in the powerlessness of it, of competing with an irresistible force just to see if they could withstand it without being overtaken.

Riku hadn’t felt that pull since his true face had been restored, since his friends had clasped their hands around his and reminded him of the riverbank at the bottom.

He felt it now.

“…iku. Riku. _Riku.”_

He flinched when Leon’s hand rested on his shoulder.

“Hey, you okay?”

Riku blinked at him. “Sorry, what?”

Leon looked him over for a moment, his brow knit in the middle, and Riku suddenly felt ill.

There was a tremor under his foot, and he glanced down. A ring of light was expanding below him, and stumbled back as it spouted upward like a fountain and echoed out in a five-foot radius. The pillar of light flickered like a faulty hologram before vanishing, and the ring on the stone street rippled and stuttered out over and over again.

Leon stared at the flickering pattern on the street between them. “Huh,” he said.

“Better late than never,” Riku said dryly.

Leon righted himself and sheathed the gunblade. “Something must be malfunctioning. It shouldn't have a problem with enemies this weak.” He swiped a hand over his chin. “There’s a command console in the castle study. We’ll have to check it out.”

He started towards the postern, and Riku put a few feet of distance between them before he followed along, keeping his eyes trained on the ground. He watched the cobblestones pass under him, transitioning into cracked mosaic tile and then burnished brass.

Riku was intimately familiar with the gravity of darkness. It was a steady, constant tug at his heart, a reminder that doing good was a lifelong effort. The path he chose walked the razor’s edge, but he was sure it was the right one.

_Why is this happening now?_ he thought. _Am I slipping?_

He didn’t _feel_ like he was slipping. He felt good—mostly—for the first time in years. He felt at home on his island again, felt deserving to stand at his friends’ side. He’d been waiting his entire life to become a keyblade master, and now he was just weeks away from his chance to prove that he was worthy of the title. He wasn’t without regret—that, he was sure, would never leave him entirely—but he had found the strength to repair what he could of his mistakes, and he trusted it.

So…why?

Leon extended a hand to halt him at the castle entrance. The metal door was jarred open, a collapsed stone pillar lying across the crumpled remains.

They stepped carefully around it. Riku trailed his hand along the sleek walls as they wandered deeper into the castle halls, tracing the seam of the wallpaper with his fingertips. It was a strangely homey design for a structure built on a cluttered system of ventilation pipes. Leon disappeared into a doorway ahead, and Riku turned the corner after him.

He froze.

Ansem’s face loomed over him, an unfamiliar coat across his shoulders. He was rendered in cutting profile, his hair slicked cleanly back.

The distant murmur of Riku’s nightmare echoed through him. _I thought I’d lost you._

Then Leon called to him from the doorway beside the painting, and Riku snapped back into himself.

“Sorry,” he said, and he crossed the room in a few quick strides, keeping the portrait in his peripheral vision.

The passageway in the open wall was dim and narrow, and as Riku turned the corner, it opened up into a cavernous turbine lined in towering columns of power cores. Looking down through the glass floor of the bridge made him queasy. _This must power the entire castle,_ he thought. _Maybe the entire world._

Leon’s startled voice echoed from the open door of the chamber at the end of the bridge. “Hey!”

Riku bolted the last few steps, raising his keyblade as he went. When he skidded into the room, Leon was swinging his blade over the console like he was shooing a swarm of insects. A cluster of heartless scrambled out of the far side door in a panic.

Riku eased out of his stance, his heart still hammering. “What happened?”

Leon pushed his hair back a frustrated sweep. “Ugh, they’re worse than cats,” he muttered. “This whole area was open to the outside.”

Riku peered around him at the row of monitors embedded in the control console. Some of the keys had been pried clean off the keyboard and were strewn across the floor, and two of the monitors were just collages of brightly colored static snow.

Leon hovered over the console, cursing quietly. He set his hands to the ruined keyboard and tried to punch in a string of numbers.

A shower of sparks sprayed out at him, and he stumbled back. The screen flashed, a buzzer sounding overhead, and the doors at either end of the room slid shut with a ringing finality, the lights above them glaring red.

Riku cast Leon a sideways glance. “I’m guessing that’s not what you were going for.”

Leon stabbed at the keyboard a few more times, but the display was frozen in place. He crossed to the control room door and pulled a keycard from his pocket, swiping it in the reader affixed to the wall. When the door remained stubbornly shut, the light above it still an uncompromising red, he unsnapped a communicator the size of a pack of cards from his belt.

“Cid,” he said, “I think we found the problem.”

After a moment, a muffled reply crackled from it. _“You wanna give me a little more to work with?”_

“Security system’s on the fritz. The console got trampled by stray heartless. Looks like they did some hardware damage.” He rubbed his temple in irritation. “Oh, and we’re locked in.”

There was a short snort of laughter on the other end of the communicator.

Leon’s expression turned deadly. “Cid,” he warned.

_“All right, all right, gimme a minute. I’m running a diagnostic.”_

Riku leaned into the wall behind him, dismissing his keyblade. His limbs still felt weak and jittery, and there was a pit of sour adrenaline in his stomach that he could taste on the back of his tongue. He swiped a hand over his forehead, his messy bangs sticking to it with sweat.

The room was starting to feel claustrophobic.

There was a string of muttering over the communicator line, nearly drowned in audio fuzz. _“Uhh…okay. Okay, listen…I think I can override the emergency lock and get you two outta there, but you’re not gonna like it.”_

Leon grimaced. “Why.”

_“Look, I don’t wanna break my code. Do—do you know how fragile this shit is? It’s basically duck tape and string. I could put the town security out of commission for weeks if I fuck with it too much—”_

“Can’t we just brute-force it?” Leon interrupted, his hand going to the hilt of his blade.

_“Uh-uh, no way! My system is half trashed already. You keep your mitts off.”_ He paused. _“Gimme two hours,”_ he said, then added: _“M…maybe more like four.”_

Riku felt dizzy. He pressed his back against the wall and slid down it until his hands found the floor.

Leon was standing with his arm braced on his hip, his head hanging in defeat. He finally spoke into it again, his voice strained. “Do what you need to do, and keep us updated.”

He snapped the communicator back onto his belt and turned towards Riku with a sigh. “There goes my morning,” he said, then suddenly straightened. “Shit—are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

Riku blinked at him. He realized that he’d been digging his fingernails into his forearms, and he uncurled them slowly. He shrugged.

Leon crossed the room and dropped to one knee at his side, rifling in his satchel. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think to warn you about the study—”

“It’s okay,” Riku said. His tongue felt thick around the words.

Leon pressed a waterskin into his hands, wrapping them around the neck of it. “Here. You should drink something.”

The thought of swallowing didn’t do much for him, but he raised it to his lips anyway. Leon slumped down next to him, pulling the sheath of his blade off his shoulder to lay it beside them.

For a while, they sat in silence, broken only by the low electrical hum of a thousand diligent machines just trying to do their jobs. Riku tipped back his head, the last of the sour adrenaline leaching out of him. His body felt like it had been hollowed out and filled with sand.

Eventually, Leon glanced in his direction. “What happened back there, with those heartless,” he said, “that happen often?”

Riku didn’t bother to open his eyes. “Not lately.”

Leon shifted beside him, his boots dragging along the floor. “Can you control it?” he asked.

There was no judgement in the question at all; there was even a gentleness to it that made the surge of humiliation climbing Riku’s throat feel all the more childish. “I could,” he answered, then added weakly, “I thought I could.”

He heard the ring of Leon’s blade sliding on the tile floor, and he cracked his eyes open. Leon was running his thumb thoughtfully over the metalwork in the hilt, his lips pursed. “How long until your exam?”

Riku tried to ignore the wave of nausea that swept through him. “Less than two weeks.”

Leon hummed, no particular inflection to it. He nudged Riku with an elbow. “You’ll figure it out by then.”

“You’re awfully confident in me,” Riku said flatly, but when he glanced in Leon’s direction again, his expression was clouded and solemn.

“I’ve felt it, too,” Leon admitted quietly. “The call to darkness.”

Riku didn’t know what to say to that, and Leon didn’t offer anything further.

About halfway through the waterskin, Riku started to feel like himself again. The walls had stopped closing in on him, and the gnawing anxiety had reduced to the usual stir.

At some point, Leon had shuffled down until he was laying with his hands folded under his head, his legs sprawled out across the floor.

Riku tossed the waterskin in his direction. “Thanks,” he said.

Leon was knocking his foot absently against the side of the console. “Sure,” he said.

Riku pulled his knees up to his chest. “Leon,” he started, “why do you…do this every day? There are whole teams of people on the rebuild effort now.”

Leon stopped tapping his foot. He was quiet for a long time. “I failed this place once before,” he said. There was something steely and resonant in his voice. “I’m not going to fail it again.”

Riku stared at him, and something inside him began to tentatively unfold.

He wondered how much he and Leon had grown alike because of… _this,_ this quiet, constant flame in Riku’s heart, one he never really knew if he was supposed to have. A flame he kept one hand cupped protectively around, terrified to let it die, and terrified to let it thrive.

The piece of Riku that would take a killing blow for his best friend and then dream about finding constellations the freckles beneath his eyes. The piece of him that would swim out of darkness and back in again, for the love of a boy who would never love him back.

There was a tickle at the back of Riku’s throat, an urgent, alien impulse that made his insides turn over. If he could say it out loud, just once; if he could be understood by someone, by _anyone…_

Then Leon turned to face him, perching his head on his hand, and the thing unfolding inside Riku collapsed back into formless uncertainty.

“The notorious Riku,” Leon mused. “From the way Sora talked about you, I thought you’d be more…”

Riku swept a hand nervously over the back of his neck. “More what?” he said. After a moment, he ducked his head and added, “What, uh…what does Sora say about me?”

Leon shot him a knowing look, and Riku’s face started to burn.

“Hm,” he said with an infuriatingly smug smile, “I guess I thought you’d be taller.”

Riku stretched out his legs. “Give me a couple years,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”

Riku had no idea how long had passed by the time he was lying flat on the floor, one arm tucked under his head and the other folded over his stomach. On the opposite side of the room, Leon had taken to flipping a coin and snatching it out of the air in turns.

“I don’t get it,” Riku admitted. “I found such a reliable balance, and now I’m _this_ close to the Mark of Mastery exam, and I can’t keep a hold on it anymore.”

The coin produced a bright ringing as it spun from Leon’s hand. “I don’t wanna presume,” he said, “but I don’t think the darkness is what’s out of balance.”

Riku frowned. “You sound like Mickey.”

“Sora hasn’t told me much,” Leon said, “but near as I can tell, this is the first quiet moment either of you have had in a long time.”

Riku hummed. Leon tossed the coin in his direction, and Riku scrambled to grab it out of the air, then propped himself up on an elbow.

“It’s easy to force down what you think doesn’t matter when the world’s falling apart,” Leon said.

Riku closed his fist around the coin, his fingernails biting into his palm. “Maybe,” he said.

“If you’re anything like me,” Leon said, casting him a pointed look, “what you force down won’t stay down forever.”

Riku’s heart knocked against his ribcage as if beckoning him to open it, a call he was never brave enough to answer. He dragged himself upright, pulling his legs underneath him. “I don’t see why it should matter now.”

Leon shrugged. “Nothing to distract you.”

Riku turned the coin over between his fingers. He flicked it back. “I’m out of touch with my heart,” he conceded.

“I hear that’s kind of important for keyblade masters.”

“What if…” Riku cleared his throat. “What if I’m not ready for what it has to say? What if it asks more of me than I can give? What if—” His voice broke, and he swallowed against it.

Something shook inside him, something almost as old as he was. A joke with no punchline. A thrum like a second heartbeat.

“What if it wants too much?”

Leon propped himself up. He looked at Riku thoughtfully for a moment, then scooted back until he could lean into the wall at Riku’s side. “Honestly,” he said, “it probably will.”

Riku huffed out a laugh. “That’s reassuring.”

Leon smiled at him—actually smiled, with his whole mouth. Riku mirrored it.

After a moment, it hedged into a smirk. “You should ask Cloud out,” he said.

Leon’s smile faltered, and he punched Riku on the arm. “I—I’m _working_ on it, okay?”

“Hah! So you _do_ like him—” he broke off with a yelp as Leon caught him firmly around the neck with one arm and twisted his knuckles into Riku’s hair until it was a frazzled mess.

“Lay off,” he laughed, “I get enough of that from Yuffie.”

The buzzer rang through the room again, and they both jumped. There was a heavy metallic thud, and the lights glaring over the doors flicked off. Leon’s communicator crackled to life.

_“Alright, boys,”_ Cid said, his voice satisfied but worn, _“You should be off lock-down. Just in time, too—I think our other master-to-be is about to touch down.”_

They exchanged glances. Leon climbed to his feet and crossed to the door, pulling his keycard from his pocket again. He held it up to Riku with a nod, as if asking him for luck.

He swiped it. This time, there was the tinny chorus of the intricate machinery inside unspooling. The door slid open.

Riku breathed out.

“We’re cleared. Nice work, Cid.” Leon turned back to him, relief plain on his face. “Come on,” He said, extending a hand. “Radiant Garden Restoration Committee never rests.”

Riku took it, and Leon pulled him to his feet. It was like the open door had flipped a switch in him, and the easygoing side of Leon receded back into a worn-out leader.

“We’ll need to set up routine patrols to keep the strays in check until Cid can get the security system back up and running…” he seemed to be talking to himself more than to Riku. He started towards the door, thinking out loud as he went. “I’ll have to recruit some additional hands, and we may need you two on patrols. Maybe we can fit it into your training schedule…”

“Leon, wait.” Riku grabbed him by the wrist, a flash of panic suddenly spiraling through him.

He turned, raising an expectant eyebrow.

Riku’s mouth hung open as he searched for the right words. “I—I don’t want Sora to know about…whatever’s going on with me. He’s got a lot on his mind already, and I…” his fingers tightened around Leon’s wrist. “I know it would upset him,” he mumbled. “To see me like that again.”

Leon’s eyes softened. He glanced down at Riku’s hand, and Riku hastily released him.

“Sparring is Yuffie’s territory,” Leon said, “but I’ll make sure you stay on separate patrols.”

A wave of relief washed over him. “Thank you,” he said earnestly.

Leon looked him over, offering him a genuine smile. “It’s none of my business, but…if you need someone to talk to.” He shrugged, his tone almost sheepish. “I’ll be around.”

* * *

The sun was reaching its peak as they made their way back towards the cottage. Riku’s limbs were still weary and loose, but his head was clear, and his heart was lighter in his chest.

A swell of laughter drifted through the air as they climbed the stairs to the village, followed by the commotion of slamming doors and thudding boxes. The committee was gathered outside the open cottage door, milling around a bright, blocky mass of a ship.

Aerith reached out her hands for Sora’s as he climbed down from the cockpit, the duffel over his shoulder half-zipped and spilling clothes onto the cobblestone plaza. He looked up as they approached, and his eyes sparkled when they found Riku’s face.

They were a bottomless blue, half-hidden in a galaxy of freckles. His smile was vibrant and wide.

Riku’s heart seized in his chest. He stood, rooted to the spot, as it spoke to him.

For the first time in years, he listened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *dabs sweaty brow* re:mind almost decanonized this one lads......  
> shoutout to my beta and first human person i copped to writing kh fic to, @himboyys on twitter <3


	2. Never Again

“Riku!”

Sora braced against Aerith’s hands and launched himself from the open hatch of the ship, leaving her flustered and laughing in his wake. His duffel bag slipped from his shoulder, and he let it drop at his feet as he sprinted across the plaza at top speed.

A flash of alarm passed over Riku’s face, and he barely had time to brace himself before Sora dove at him, throwing his arms around Riku’s neck and locking his legs around Riku’s hips while he staggered under the weight.

Riku fought to find their combined center of gravity, clutching Sora’s waist. He steadied, his breathless laughter dancing across the side of Sora’s face. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Sora grinned into the mess of his hair. “Missed you,” he mumbled. He tightened his hold around Riku’s neck, and Riku squeezed him in turn. 

“You’re gonna miss me more if I don’t survive your next hug,” he said.

Sora let out a long-suffering sigh. He unhooked his legs from Riku’s waist and let them hang, frowning at how unfairly tall Riku was. “Keyblade masters should always expect the unexpected,” he said seriously.

Sora relaxed his grip, and Riku lowered him gradually down, until the earth was firm under his feet again. His ocean-green eyes found Sora’s through the silver curtain of his bangs. His smile was warm and familiar.

There was a huff of laughter beside them, and Riku suddenly released him.

Sora glanced over, the smile overtaking his face again. “Leon!”

“If you do that to me, I’ll drop you,” Leon deadpanned.

Sora pursed his lips. “You’re no fun.”

“Um, _hello?”_

Sora turned. Yuffie was leaning into the wall of the cottage with her hand perched on her hip, tapping her foot in mock impatience. “Aren’t you forgetting someone?”

Sora peeled himself off of Riku and rushed over to fall into her arms. 

She caught him with a startled grunt. “You’re _way_ heavier than you look,” she wheezed. 

Sora hummed, draping himself over her shoulders. “It’s all muscle,” he said, and he twisted in her arms with an exaggerated sigh. “These guns are a curse.”

Yuffie snorted. “Yeah, _okay.”_ She let go, and Sora stumbled as he righted himself. “We’ll see how those guns hold up in one-on-one.”

“You asked for it,” Sora said with a grin, adjusting the hem of his shirt.

He remembered his duffel, and then the fact that half his belongings were no longer in it, and jogged back towards the ship. Aerith was helping a squirming Donald down from the cockpit, a sticker-covered trunk under one wing. Sora knelt down to scoop his strewn clothing off the dusty ground and stuff it back into his bag. 

Donald was muttering to himself as he waddled to Sora’s side and dropped the trunk. “There—that’s the last one.” He smoothed his ruffled feathers and gave Sora a stern look. “You’re here to work, not to show off, remember?”

“Come on, Donald, lighten up.” Sora jammed a loose sock into the duffel and fought with the zipper. Goofy held out a crumpled pair of shorts, and Sora took them gratefully. 

“You be safe, now,” Goofy said, his eyes going dewy. “Three square meals a day, get a good night's sleep after trainin’, an’ don’t forget to floss—”

“Don’t coddle him, Goofy! We don’t have time to mess around—the King expects us back _on time.”_ He slapped a webbed foot anxiously against the cobblestones, eyeing the open hatch of the gummi ship with a frown.

“Aw, Donald, I just want him to know we’re supportin’ him.”

“He’s not taking it _now._ We can support him later.”

Leon started to snicker behind them, and he heard Riku bite back a similar reaction.

Sora jumped to his feet. “Guys,” he interrupted, his face going hot.

“Now look, Goofy, you’re embarrassing him!”

“Okay, time to go, the King’s waiting!” Sora ushered them both back toward the ship, the heat climbing up to his ears.

“We’ll be back before ya know it,” Goofy continued on as Sora boosted him into the cockpit. He laced his fingers for Donald, but he elected to clamber over Sora’s shoulder and then his head instead. 

“He’s _fine,_ he’s with Riku.” Donald turned back to them. “Take care, okay?”

“Good luck, Riku!” Goofy called with a wave. “We believe in ya, Sora!”

The hatch hissed as Donald pulled it shut, and Goofy was still waving as it rose into the air in a ripple of breeze and dust until it was the size of a flipped coin, and then it vanished in a streak of candy-red. 

Sora shouldered his duffel and lifted his trunk, spinning to face the committee. “So!” he said, hoping the color had left his face, “Where am I sleeping?”

Leon crossed the plaza and took the trunk from his hand. “You’ll be in my room,” he said. He gave Sora a firm pat on the shoulder as he brushed past and added, “Good to see you.”

Sora glanced at Riku, who was still fighting a smile half-concealed beneath a raised hand. His eyes were doing most of the laughing for him, anyway. 

Sora flashed him a sheepish grin. “He’s in a good mood,” he said, and he started toward the cottage. Riku fell in step beside him, and Sora jostled playfully into his side. “So are you.”

Riku jostled him back. “You have that effect on people,” he said.

Sora glanced up at him from the corner of his eye. Riku’s shaggy silver hair tumbled over his shoulders, and Sora could swear it had gotten longer in just the few weeks they’d been apart. His bangs were scattered over his forehead, obscuring his eyes, and Sora had the urge to push them back and steal a clearer look.

He leaned toward Riku again, but this time he only wanted to feel the brush of their shoulders as they walked, the reassurance of his tangible presence at Sora’s side.

Leon’s room was straight at the end of the hall, and he was propping Sora’s trunk against the foot of the bed when they entered. 

A tray of loose silver jewelry was overflowing on the surface of the dresser, a row of polish and wax and fine-tipped tools strewn around it. The wall surrounding the small desk in the corner was plastered with blueprints, sketches, and maps, each one peppered with notes in a tight, scrawling hand. There were even a handful of photographs taped by the head of the bed.

Sora gazed around with his mouth half-open. He dropped his duffel at the threshold. “It’s cool!”

“Try not to trash it,” Leon said. “Yuffie wants the two of you later for an initiation spar. We’ll talk training regimen over dinner tonight.” He headed for the door, and then kicked it shut behind him in one smooth motion.

Riku stared at the place Leon had disappeared, his shoulders tense. He jumped when Sora reached out to him.

“Hey, are you feeling okay?”

Riku blinked at him, and his eyes dropped away. “Y-yeah, I’m good. Just a long morning.” He took a small step back, the space between their bodies widening. “I might go see if anyone needs a hand with…uh, anything.” He started for the door, and some small, childish part of Sora felt cheated. 

“Wait,” Sora said, and he caught the edge of Riku’s shirt with his fingertips. 

Riku turned back to him. He looked unsure, but at least he was looking at Sora.

Sora pulled him closer, pressing his forehead to Riku’s collarbone. He smelled like home, and Sora felt like he hadn’t been home in years. Even the islands made him homesick when Riku was gone. 

He shut his eyes, curling his fingers into the soft cotton of Riku’s shirt. The mellow tide of his breathing eased Sora’s nerves, and he sighed against the beat of his heart. _You’re here._

Riku’s hand settled on the back of his head, feather-light and unthinking. “Sora,” he said, a touch of concern coloring his voice, “something wrong?”

Sora ducked his face into the warm plane of his chest. “Recharging,” he mumbled.

Riku’s arms circled him as he laced his fingers at the small of Sora’s back, turning his cheek against the crown of his head. They swayed for a moment as Sora relaxed into him, the tension he’d been holding for weeks finally unwinding.

“I really, really missed you,” Sora murmured.

Riku’s breath stirred the sweep of hair over his temple. His voice was soft and close. “I really, really missed you, too.”

* * *

True to her word, Yuffie ushered them to the square for an initiation spar when the sun was just starting to lean towards the horizon, the shadows of the street lamps beginning to stretch.

She stood with her feet set apart on the high stone wall of the square, her hands braced on her hips, and pointed an accusatory finger down at them. A bright orange bandana poked out from her closed fist.

“You slackers are two weeks away from the chance to prove yourselves keyblade masters,” she announced, and she splayed all her fingers but one, the bandana unfurling into the breeze like a terrified bird. “This is your target! If you can swipe it off me, you’ll earn my basic respect. Until then, you’re both losers in my eyes.” 

She knotted the bandana around her upper arm and tucked it into itself, a vibrant splash of color against her dark vest. She slung her shuriken over her shoulder with a broad, mischievous smile. “All right, boys,” she said, “show me what you got!”

With that, she leaped from the wall and vanished in a cloud of dust.

Sora started towards Riku, but he was already twisting at Sora’s side to stand flush against his back. They leaned into each other, keyblades raised in either direction, and Sora felt a current of emboldened energy buzzing through him as he scanned the square.

Yuffie reappeared at the outskirts in a dramatic flair of smoke, two small, glinting knives streaking towards him at alarming speed. He deflected them in quick succession, the blows ringing against the steel of his blade, but Yuffie had already vanished again by the time they were rocketing through the space where she stood.

Riku let out a startled shout, and Sora twisted in time to see Yuffie dropping to the cobblestone and striking out with one leg, sweeping Riku’s feet out from under him. He stumbled back into Sora’s arms as she vanished again, an echo of playful laughter lingering in her wake.

There was a rush of breeze and a stirring of dust over their heads, and Yuffie manifested nearly ten feet from the ground, her full-size shuriken spinning down at them. 

Sora shoved Riku out of the way and dove to one side as it struck the earth, splitting the cobblestone underneath it before vanishing in another puff.

“Something the matter?” she taunted, and Sora startled at the nearness of her voice just moments before the hood of his jacket was yanked down over his face.

He flailed a hand over his head to push it back, and a burst of laughter rolled out of Riku on the other side of the square.

Sora glowered at him. “Some help you are!”

Riku offered him a teasing shrug, and then his eyes locked over Sora’s head. He pointed the Way to the Dawn beyond him, his lips forming a word, and Sora turned to face the threat.

Yuffie was sprinting along the wall, a barrage of throwing knives pelting in his direction as she went, and Sora dodged and parried as rapidly as he could, but none of the return blows came anywhere close to her. They only had an offensive opportunity for as long as she was tangible, and the window was closing. He only had to hold out until Riku made use of the opening.

Nothing happened. Yuffie leapt from the end of the wall and vanished again, and a stab of worry pierced Sora’s chest. “Riku?” he called, and he glanced over his shoulder.

Riku was standing on the other side of the square, still as stone. His hands were empty, his keyblade dismissed, and he was clutching his arm at the elbow with his head ducked forward, his hair obscuring his face.

A dark smear stained his skin from forearm to fingertips, pulsing in diminishing beats like a dying flame as he clenched his fist around it.

A jolt of cold fear shot down Sora’s spine, but before he could call out to Riku again, Yuffie manifested between them. 

Something she saw in Sora’s face must have given her pause. She hesitated with her shuriken raised to her ear, a flicker of uncertainty softening her expression.

The bandana was torn free of her arm. 

She blinked in disbelief and spun on her heels. Riku held it up with a weak smile, his brow shining with sweat. His hands were pale and unblemished.

“We win,” he said.

She let out a short, petulant huff, snatching the bandana from Riku’s hand before vanishing from the square and reappearing on the stone wall, her legs casually crossed. “Well, I’m a little insulted that neither of you even bothered to use magic,” she said, “but, as promised, you have my _basic_ respect.” She tucked the bandana into the pocket of her shorts. “I had planned to sic the two of you on each other for a fairer fight, but I think we could all use some dinner. Consider yourselves dismissed. I’ll put you through the ringer another day.”

She stood, walking heel-to-toe along the wall until she could leap down onto the stairs and stroll back towards the cottage with her hands in her pockets, leaving them both behind.

Sora came back into himself, his heart suddenly hammering, as if being dismissed had given him permission to panic. His frantic gaze found Riku rifling through his bag for his canteen.

Sora hurried to his side. “Riku, are you—”

“I’m fine,” he interjected, and he took a long pull from his canteen and then capped it and slipped it back into his bag. “Enjoy the win, worry-wart,” he said with a quick laugh, and he reached out to ruffle Sora’s hair as he passed, following in Yuffie’s direction without so much as looking at him.

Sora watched the back of his head as he walked away, at a loss for what to say, or think, or feel.

* * *

Sora woke to an insistent hammering on his door.

A half-formed protest slurred out of his mouth, and he dragged the pillow over his head to drown out the sound and sank into the dim, cozy cocoon of his blanket. The warm weight of sleep welcomed him back, the hazy vision of a forgotten dream bleeding back into color and form.

The blanket was torn away from him, and Sora startled upright, his pillow launching halfway across the room. 

He blinked up at Yuffie through bleary eyes, rubbing a palm against one to clear away the mist. “Mm?”

Yuffie scooped up the pillow from his floor and chucked it back at him, and he floundered to catch it with rubbery arms. 

“Come on, lazybones, we’ve got work to do,” she said. “Honestly! Riku said you slept like the dead, but I figured it was an expression.”

“Riku?” Sora mumbled. He dropped the pillow in his lap and peered out the window at his bedside, squinting at the warm sunlight streaming in. “What time is it?”

“Earlier than you’re used to, island boy,” she said. “Now get up, we don’t have all day.” She gave him a quick once-over. “Briefs, huh?” she said with a smirk, then balled his comforter in her arms. “Just so you’re not tempted, I’m taking this with me.”

Yuffie obviously didn’t know many other island boys, because Sora needed a blanket to sleep about as much as he needed a drum line. He grumbled to himself as she headed for the door and curled up around his pillow, sinking back into the friendly landscape of his dreams.

Yuffie’s voice pierced through it.

“Don’t make me get a bucket,” she said.

He cracked open his eyes again. Yuffie was strolling towards the kitchen, the bedroom door wide open. He heard the menacing sound of the bathroom tap from the other end of the hall.

Sora groaned. He clawed his way out of bed and untwisted his lopsided tank top, stumbling to the dresser to yank a random pair of pants from his duffel, and a cascade of loose clothing pulled free alongside it. He fished around for his toothbrush before tugging his pants on and wandering in the direction of the bathroom.

He paused at the threshold.

The running water wasn’t Yuffie making good on her threat; it was Riku, his toothbrush poking out of his mouth as he patted the side of his face dry with a hand towel. He was already neatly dressed, and the silver mane tucked behind one ear was the only untidy thing about him.

Sora fumbled nervously with his toothbrush, wondering if he should come back, but Riku’s eyes widened as he glanced up, and then crinkled good-naturedly at the corners. He snorted around a mouthful of foam.

Sora figured that was an invitation, and he took up the place next to him at the sink. He elbowed Riku in the side. “Don’t laugh at me.”

Riku spit out his mouthful of toothpaste and grinned. “You’re a _mess,”_ he said, and he plucked a feather out of Sora’s unkempt hair. “How do you expect worlds in jeopardy to take you seriously with a sock stuck to your pants?”

“I don’t have a _sock_ stuck to my pants,” Sora grumbled, but Riku popped his toothbrush back into his mouth and reached down to peel something from the back of his thigh.

He held it up to the mirror for Sora’s inspection. It was a sock.

Sora grabbed at it, but Riku held it out of Sora’s reach and dangled it over his head.

“Seriously?” Sora leaned hard into Riku’s side, trying to bully him off the bathmat, but Riku didn’t budge. Sora stood on his toes and stretched toward his hand with a wheeze of effort, but Riku switched it to his other side and braced against Sora’s weight with his hip to hold him back.

Sora devolved into exasperated giggling as he struggled to squeeze past. “Come on, Riku, give it!”

“Uh-uh,” Riku mumbled around his toothbrush, his eyes glittering. “You goha earh’ ih.”

“Don’t make me do this,” Sora warned, but Riku didn’t move, the grin still stretched across his face. Sora shot him a devious look. “I gave you a chance,” he said, and then he planted a hand on Riku’s shoulder and went straight for the armpit.

Riku pulled in his limbs in a rush and drew in a sharp inhale, then doubled over, spraying toothpaste across the bathroom mirror. 

Sora fell back against the toilet seat and laughed until it hurt, his arms clutched around his stomach while Riku keeled forward and hacked into the sink. He was wiping tears from his eyes when a damp towel hit him smack in the face. 

Riku smeared the back of his hand over his mouth, his cheeks flushed, his eyes watering. His hair had come untucked from behind his ear, and it was plastered to his face where he had splashed it with water. 

“Jerk,” he said, the word coming out ragged. His mouth was turned up at the corner in a crooked, dazzling smile.

The fit of giggles dispelled into a warm, buoyant glow in Sora’s chest. He stood and returned to the sink, tilting his head into Riku’s shoulder. “Your hair got so long,” he mused.

Riku hummed, combing his fingers through it. He smirked at Sora’s reflection. “It does that,” he said.

“Why not just…” Sora extended a tentative hand, turning Riku’s face towards him and parting the pale forest of his bangs with his fingertips like the boughs of a willow, and the thought slipped away. The snowy-white of Riku’s lashes fluttered over his cheek, his eyes widening a barely perceptible fraction, and Sora finally had the chance to immerse himself in their familiar ocean.

After a moment, Riku’s eyes drifted closed. He leaned into the touch, and Sora’s fingers trailed along his forehead in an easy arc.

The sound of passing footsteps broke through Sora’s trance—not because they were passing, but because they stopped. 

His hand was suddenly hanging in empty space as Riku vanished from his side. He drew it to his chest and turned to the door. 

Leon was standing in it, one foot frozen half-extended behind him. “I’ll use the other sink,” he said stiffly, but Riku was already brushing past him as he headed for the kitchen.

“No need,” he said, and he didn’t meet Sora’s eye. “It’s free.”

* * *

Yuffie and Leon bickered over the patrol schedule all through breakfast, bent over the curled, yellowing pages of Leon’s log book with their heads together. Aerith hurried past, struggling to keep a stack of books upright with one arm as she looped a tie around the end of her braid with the other. She paused to plant a kiss to Leon’s temple and then Yuffie’s in turn as she fluttered by, and Yuffie slyly added a napkin-wrapped slice of warm bread to the top of her books when she leaned forward. Cid and Merlin bustled around the counter behind them, the hiss of hot cookware and roll of boiling water adding to the easy, ambient chaos of morning in the Restoration Committee home base.

Sora cheerfully accepted a peck on the top of the head as Aerith headed for the door, and then she backtracked with an apologetic smile to peck Riku on the top of his. He nestled a polished apple alongside the bundle of bread in her arms. 

It was everything Sora hoped it would be when Merlin had invited them to train in Radiant Garden in preparation for their exam. The Restoration Committee ran like a well-oiled machine, and their dedicated optimism was infectious. For the first time in years, there was no great, world-ending catastrophe hanging over their heads; Sora’s only obligations were to improve his skill and to enjoy a genuine moment of peace with people he loved, and who loved him in return.

He watched Riku fiddle with the handful of potatoes on his plate, pushing them from one end to the other with his fork. His gaze was fixed on the patterns in the wood grain, where it had stayed almost without exception since they’d settled in for the briefing.

 _Why are you still so far away?_ Sora thought. _What’s the point of a peaceful moment if you’re not going to be in it with me?_

Riku’s gaze lifted to touch his own, just for a moment, and it flickered quickly away.

Sora’s fingers bit into the seat of his stool. _Why won’t you look at me?_

Then Cid set a mountainous dish of eggs between them with a flourish, and Merlin leaned over him with a kindly smile to fill his teacup, and Sora was swept back into the well-worn routine of Committee business.

* * *

Riku was avoiding him.

At first, Sora thought he might be imagining it. Leon kept them both busy, from patrols to street clean-up to organizing recovered books; their schedule didn’t really overlap during the day, and he and Yuffie ended up eating from the bundle of fruit and cheese that Cid brought out to them while they worked through the afternoon, turning over dried-up flower beds in the town center plaza.

Sora focused on the task at hand and tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about Riku, tried not to think about the ocean eyes beneath the willow-boughs of his bangs, tried not to think about them glancing off him like he wasn’t there. He tried not to think about Riku’s hand sweeping through his hair as he turned his back, or his breezy laugher as he left Sora behind.

He unearthed his hands from the flowerbed, the soil staining them to the wrist. His nails were black underneath.

He tried not to think about the pulse in Riku’s closed fist. He tried not to think about the last time he’d seen it.

By the time they were hauling their supplies back to Merlin’s cottage in the evening, sweaty and covered in dirt, Sora was starting to feel antsy. He was overreacting, and he knew it; Riku was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He’d made the decision to work with the darkness instead of against it, and he’d proven that he was strong enough to make it a reality. Sora was worrying over nothing. He should be proud, even.

Sora just needed to see him. He just needed to reach out and touch him, just for a second, to reassure himself that he was real. 

The Committee gathered for dinner after a long and taxing day, and a surge of relief almost knocked him out of his seat when Riku wandered into the commotion of the kitchen, his cascade of silver hair tied back in a tail and his vest discarded in favor of a clean white t-shirt.

Sora jumped to his feet, nearly toppling his stool, but Riku didn’t break his stride. He brushed past the table, swiping a piece of bread from the basket in its center as he went, and headed for the cottage door.

“Riku,” Sora said, struggling to keep the disappointment from his voice, “you’re not eating?”

He hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. He turned back with a flash of a smile. “Just going out for a walk.”

Sora shoved his stool back under the table with one foot. “I’ll go with you,” he said.

“No,” Riku said briskly, and Sora froze. “I—I’m just clearing my head. I won’t be long.” 

He disappeared, the door swinging firmly shut behind him, and there was an impulse in Sora still reaching out for him long after he was gone.

  
  


That night, in the quiet privacy of the dark, Sora stared up at Leon’s ceiling and let his mind run circles around him.

He knew that he sometimes had tunnel vision, especially when he got anxious. He knew that his friends thought he was oblivious because he had a short attention span, and because he preferred to address problems head-on. He knew that he had a hard time trusting when things were going right.

But if Sora knew nothing else in the universe, he knew Riku. 

He knew that Riku ran when he was afraid—and when he was afraid, he pulled away from Sora like he was drawing back from an open flame. Riku had changed so much since they were kids, since the first time Sora had looked at him and seen a wall halfway to a fortress being laid between them.

Sora turned over on his side, clutching his pillow to his chest. _He’s still here,_ Sora told himself. _He’s still with me. He’s not going to disappear again._

Sometimes, even though he would never admit it, he wondered if Riku really needed him at all.

  
  


Sora woke in a haze with late-morning sunlight streaming over him. His mouth was dry, his joints aching. For a while, he watched the dust motes as they swirled through the golden light, dancing around one another in perfect synchronization. 

When they started to blur together, he sat up, his back popping in protest. He couldn’t have slept more than a handful hours, but he was sure someone should have woken him ages ago.

He wandered into the hallway without bothering to dress himself, hoping that a splash of cold water would clear some of the fog from his head. The door to Aerith’s room was cracked open, a rustle coming from inside.

Sora’s heart stuttered. Riku was staying in Aerith’s room.

He poked his head in without knocking. “Riku?”

There was movement on the other side of the room: the flick of a long, narrow braid as Aerith rose, drawing an ice-blue nightgown from the drawer of her dresser. She smiled warmly at him, and he felt awful for the way his heart sank.

“Good morning,” she said. “We were worried.”

He rubbed the sleep from one eye with a knuckle. “Sorry,” he said. “How come no one woke me up?”

‘Yuffie did her best, but you seemed to need it,” Aerith said. She sat on the edge of the bed, tucking her nightgown into her lap. “Were you looking for Riku?”

Sora chewed his lip. “Yeah. Is he around?”

She shook her head. “He and Leon are on the morning patrol.” 

There must have been something pathetic in his face, because she shifted over and patted the space next to her. Sora sighed, and he pushed through the door to settle beside her, leaning his head against her shoulder. 

She gave the top of his head a gentle pat. “Are you fighting?” she asked.

“N…no,” Sora said. “I don’t think so, anyway. He just…isn’t talking to me. It’s freaking me out.”

She made a soft, consolatory sound. “You should tell him.”

“I’m trying,” Sora grumbled. “He’s not making it very easy for me, though.”

She pressed a light kiss to the hair at his cheek. “He cares about you,” she said. “It’ll be alright.”

He sighed again, and tried to believe her.

* * *

When he’d pinned Riku flat for the third time in a row, he started to feel like he was being hustled. 

Sora sat back on Riku’s hips and dismissed his keyblade. “Are you going easy on me?” he said.

Riku's face was flushed. He very pointedly didn’t look at him, an impressive feat for someone pinned on his back. “Maybe you’re just improving,” he mumbled.

Sora swallowed a flutter of hurt, and he climbed to his feet. “Don’t baby me,” he said, the words coming out harsher than he intended. “I’m not a kid.” He crossed to the corner of the square and leaned into the stone wall as he shrugged his jacket back on. He heard Riku shifting as he lifted onto his elbows.

Yuffie had left them to their own devices after the first round, instructing them to spar to the best of five before they showed their faces back at the cottage. Riku hadn’t even put up a fight; Yuffie would probably assume they’d blown it off if they went back now.

Riku climbed to his feet, and Sora focused on fastening the buckles on his hand guards.

“I know you’re not,” Riku said quietly. “I really wasn’t throwing them.”

“Could have fooled me.” Sora winced at how passive-aggressive he sounded. He shouldered his satchel, sucking in a breath, and turned to face him. “We have some extra time,” he said, and added timidly, “Do you wanna just…go somewhere? Maybe down to the canyon?”

Riku stiffened. “I, uh, I have to cover an evening patrol…”

Sora balled his fists at his sides, and the storm of feelings that had been churning in him started to shake loose. “Riku, I was _with you_ when Leon assigned the patrols!”

The color in Riku’s face deepened, and he looked down at his feet, his expression pained.

Sora’s first instinct was to comfort him, and that just made him angrier. He took a step forward, crowding into Riku’s space. “What aren’t you telling me?” he demanded. “Why are you pushing me away? You promised you wouldn’t do that again!” His eyes started to sting, and he blinked them furiously to keep them from welling over. “I thought we were a team. I thought you trusted me.”

Riku's eyes met his, bewildered, and Sora felt a bitter rush of triumph. _So that’s what it took for you to look at me again._

He glanced down at his open palm. “I…I think I’m losing control of the darkness,” Riku admitted. “I’m still figuring it out.”

“Well, _yeah,”_ Sora said.

Riku’s eyes snapped back to his face.

“I’m not worried about the darkness,” Sora said, and he meant it. “I know you’re stronger than that. I’m worried about whatever’s underneath, because I _know_ there’s always something underneath, and I _know_ that’s what you’re not telling me.”

Riku stared at him, wide-eyed, his mouth hanging open. He looked for all the worlds like Sora had reached out and slapped him. 

Sora hadn’t taken that off the table, either.

“Whatever you’re keeping from me—if it’s hard or scary or miserable, I don’t care. I don’t care if you think it’s only yours to carry. I would rather face down the impossible together than worry myself sick alone! I—” the tightness in his throat finally clamped down, and the rest of the thought was lost to frustrated tears.

For another heartbeat, Riku stared at him like a deer in headlights. Then, all at once, Sora was wrapped in a firm embrace, his face submerged in a sea of silver hair.

“I’m so sorry,” Riku whispered, his voice wavering. “I’m so, so sorry, Sora. I should have known—I didn’t think—I wasn’t thinking, and I—”

Sora stood stock-still, an electric cocktail swirling in the pit of his stomach. Something swelled and splintered inside him, like a dam beginning to give. Riku’s hands fisted into his shirt against the small of his back, and it shattered.

He threw his arms around Riku’s neck and buried his face in his shoulder, the tears coming in earnest. Riku’s hand found its way into his hair, pulling him tighter into the warm, comforting hollow in the crook of his neck. He let Riku bear his weight, let his sturdy, undeniable presence anchor him to earth.

Riku eased back, and Sora grasped for him with terrified hands before Riku’s open palms cupped his face. He swept his thumbs over Sora’s tear-streaked cheeks and pushed back his hair to press his forehead to Sora’s, their noses bumping between them. Sora reached up to clutch his hands, their fingers threading against the side of his face.

“I…I’m not ready to tell you everything,” Riku said, his voice strained, “but as soon as I am, I _will_ tell you everything, Sora, okay?”

Sora nodded, sniffling. Riku pulled him flush against his chest, and Sora squeezed his eyes shut until he was the only thing left in the world.

“I’m never going to do that to you again,” Riku promised, the words hushed and hard. “Never again. I swear.”

For a while, Riku held him, and he cried like a little kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (looks at closeted riku) we need to go deeper...  
> The exceptional @theFauxsynder on twitter made [ART](https://twitter.com/thefauxsynder/status/1237898482096078848?s=21) of this fic and im STILL DYING??? Check it out and also all of their spectacular work!!!


	3. So, You've Come Back

Radiant Garden’s library, even in disrepair, was a spectacular sight.

Floor-to-ceiling windows embellished with intricate stained glass illuminated row after row of labyrinthine shelves, encircled on either side by elegant staircases arcing to the balcony above. The translucent curtains were so light that even flipping the pages of a text seemed to stir them, and each step sent motes of glittering dust swirling through the bright morning light as he and Leon milled between disorderly stacks of books.

They had been painstakingly sorting, labelling, and re-shelving Aerith’s growing collection for hours, and Riku didn’t mind. He couldn’t have focused on anything else, anyway, and the quiet stillness of the library gave him an opportunity to do some sorting of his own. 

After their half-baked excuse for a spar, Riku had returned to the cottage with Sora hefted onto his back, which he insisted was fair and just recompense for Riku’s secrecy. Sora had tried to kick the cottage door open with his shoe, and Leon yanked it out from under them to the sight of a wobbling, laughing pillar, his expression halfway between amusement and exasperation.

Riku was supposed to be on patrol with Yuffie this morning, but Leon insisted on the change of plan. He didn’t offer any explanation. 

As Riku watched him methodically organizing the mountain of books piled on the low wooden table under the stairs, he began to suspect that this might be Leon’s quiet, unassuming way of inviting his confidence.

Riku didn’t have a clue what to say.

It was as though cracking open the door to his heart had let in a flood. Everything inside of him was amplified, and it was making him sore from the inside out to hold it all. It was no wonder Sora had spotted it from a mile away.

He looked down, leafing through the book in his hands, and swallowed. 

_I never wanted to make him cry again,_ he thought. _I’ve been hurting him over and over for years, and I’m still doing it, even after all we went through. There’s something in my heart that terrifies me. What if it terrifies him, too?_

He couldn’t make the words manifest, so he bit his tongue and let the time pass in silence, trying to make sense of the racket inside him.

  
  


Aerith arrived around midday with another armful of books and two imposing helpers in tow. One was a tall, dark-haired woman carrying a truly impressive tower of heavy texts, and the other was a reserved man with a shock of styled blonde hair sweeping the sides of his face, nearly obscured by the stack in his own hands. He met Riku’s eye for a moment as he passed, his expression blank and unchanging.

Leon greeted them with a quick once-over and a weary sigh. “Making more work for us?” he said.

“New donations,” Aerith said with a bright smile, and she dropped the stack at Riku’s side in a puff of shimmering dust.

Leon coughed, fanning the air around him. “Gee, thanks.”

The woman at Aerith’s side set down her burden in a heap and brushed the dust from her hands. “Who’s the new kid?”

“Friend of Sora’s,” Leon answered. “He’s training for his Mark of Mastery exam.”

“A keyblade wielder?” asked the soft voice of the man, peering curiously around the precarious tower in his arms. Leon started to shovel the pile of books sprawled around him out of the way, and the man gratefully lowered them down.

“I meant, like, a name,” the woman said, rolling her eyes. She offered Riku a hand. “Tifa,” she said.

Riku took it. Her handshake was as intimidating as her arms. “Riku,” he said. 

“Don’t mind this one,” she said, tipping her chin toward the man with a grin. “He can’t talk to people.”

“I can,” he answered flatly. “I just choose not to.”

Riku rubbed his sore palm. “So do you have a name, or…?”

Leon snorted, and the man narrowed his eyes at him. Leon turned up an apologetic hand. 

He turned back to Riku. “It’s Cloud,” he said. “I owe a lot to your friend. I’m glad he found you.”

Riku smiled. “So am I,” he said, and a little too much honesty snuck into his voice. He bit the inside of his cheek. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Cloud gave him a short nod, and that seemed to be that. 

Aerith began to quietly review their new donors, dividing the piles in front of her into orderly rows, but Riku was watching Cloud from the corner of his eye, unable to quell his curiosity.

He wasn’t as noticeably muscular as Tifa, but there was an unassuming definition in his arms and shoulders that let on to a lifetime of versatile training. His face was soft, almost angelic, and his eyes were a mellow powder-blue that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a renaissance painting. If it weren’t for the steely edge to his expression and the absolute, understated confidence with which he carried himself, Riku might have ventured to call him non-threatening.

At Cloud’s side, Leon continued to sort, cracking book covers one at a time to mark them before separating them into categories. His movements were casual and unhurried.

Determinedly so. Almost like he was trying.

Leon caught him staring. A smug smile snuck over Riku’s mouth, and he raised an eyebrow. 

Leon glared daggers at him.

“—we only have a few more residents to ask,” Aerith finished, and Riku realized he hadn’t been listening.

Tifa looped an arm over Aerith’s shoulder and gave it a warm, excited squeeze. “At this rate, this place’ll be back to its former glory before the end of the summer.” She cracked a smile at them. “Keep it up, guys.”

Leon made a low, affirmative sound without looking up from his work. Aerith and Tifa turned to leave, but Cloud hung behind.

“If you need hands on patrol,” he said, leaning into the table at Leon’s side, “I’ll make time.”

Leon leaned an elbow against the table and propped his head against his fist. “I’ll let you know,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

A ghost of a smile flickered over Cloud’s lips. “Any time, Squall.”

The look of bewilderment on Leon’s face was priceless. Riku fought to keep his expression in check.

“It’s what Yuffie calls you, isn’t it?” Cloud said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Leon turned back to his books and leafed through one. Riku noticed a flush of color rising on his cheeks. “I could get used to it,” he said.

Cloud lingered for another moment, then leaned away from the table and headed in the direction where Tifa and Aerith had disappeared. He waved a belated hand towards Riku as he went, as if he’d only just remembered that Riku was there. “Good luck with your exam.”

“Thanks,” Riku said, and his eyes followed Cloud until the heavy ornate door of the library clicked shut behind him.

Riku stared at Leon, who stared at his book.

“You got something to say?” Leon mumbled.

“Yeah,” Riku said, “that was _painful_ to watch. I see why Yuffie worries about you turning to stone.”

Leon didn’t dignify that with eye contact. “Shouldn’t you be thinking about your exam?” he said coolly.

“I’m learning to connect with my heart,” Riku insisted. “I thought you were supposed to be setting an example.” 

Leon reclined in his chair and propped his legs up on the table, resting an open text in his lap. “I’m sure you have more important things to do than disrespect your mentors.”

Riku laughed. “Not until I’m a keyblade master. You’re stuck with me until I’m busy with interstellar responsibility.”

Leon shook his head in astonishment. “I can’t believe I used to want one of those.”

Riku eyed the blade propped at Leon’s side, intricate engraving and polished steel that was nearly as long as Riku was tall. “We can’t all wield whatever that is.”

“This old thing?” Leon knocked on the sheath, and it hummed like a struck bell. “Please—you should see Cloud’s. Gotta figure he’s compensating for something.” He snorted. “Besides, you’re one to talk. Yours looks like a novelty can opener.”

Riku kicked the leg of his chair under the table. “Shut up, your sword has a _gun_ on it.”

“What? I can’t hear you over the jangle of your carabiner.”

Riku narrowed his eyes. He leaned forward, a sly grin spreading across his face. “You spend a lot of time thinking about what Cloud may or may not compensate for?”

“God, I was so wrong about you. You’re _way_ worse than Yuffie.” Leon snapped the text shut and flung it onto the table between them, and Riku startled back with a laugh. “I don’t have to listen to this. I’m gonna start shelving.”

  
  


By the late afternoon, the library was beginning to look like a functional institution. The conversation between them had petered out after the first hour or so, and Riku was starting to worry that he would let the day pass him by without taking the chance to unpack his thoughts. The more of their workload dwindled under his hands, the more Riku felt piling up in his heart.

Keeping secrets from Sora was a hopeless undertaking, and it was only a perfect storm of circumstance and bad decisions that had enabled Riku to mask his feelings for as long as he had. He’d caused himself and those around him immeasurable pain trying to hide from Sora, but there was little in this universe that wouldn’t yield to the light of Sora’s heart.

Riku had been blind to believe he wouldn’t be the first to bend beneath it.

On the other side of the room, Leon hefted a small mountain of books into his arms and took up a spot on the opposite side of the shelf where Riku was working. The opening between them gradually narrowed as he slotted them into place.

Riku tried to form the shape of it in his mouth, and it made his bones feel like rubber. 

He straightened the coarse spine of a faded dictionary under his fingertips. “Hey, Leon?”

“Mm?”

“I’m gay.”

Leon paused. He set down the stack of books on a shelf and leaned against his elbow at Riku’s level, peering through the opening at him. His expression was fond and reflective. “How’d that feel?” he said.

Riku clenched both hands over his stomach. He couldn’t tell if they were shaking, or if he was. 

“Awful,” he admitted, “but…really, really good.”

Leon went back to his books, his face studiously neutral. “Are you gonna tell him?”

Riku bit his lip. “I…I don’t know how.”

“You just told me,” Leon said.

“I told you half,” he mumbled.

Leon disappeared from the gap in the shelf as he moved down the line, the pile in his arms dwindling. “Tell me the rest,” he said.

Riku gave it a long moment’s thought. He tugged on the loose ribbon of the dictionary, watching the almost imperceptible threads that bound it catch the sun. “The darkness,” he started, “it’s always been bound up in this…this shame. I thought I was ashamed of being weak, or of letting it in, and if I could conquer the darkness, the shame would go with it.” He sighed, and the ribbon fluttered under his breath. “I think I had it backwards.”

Leon rounded the end of the shelf and started to work back towards him. “You love him, don’t you?”

Riku’s knees almost went out. He glanced at Leon out of the corner of his eye. “It’s—it’s really that obvious?”

A smile played over Leon’s lips.

Riku pulled in a slow breath, and closed his eyes. “I do,” he admitted quietly, and a rush like a waterfall cascaded through him.

“Are you ashamed of loving him?”

Something turned over in Riku’s gut. “It’s not…it’s not the love, exactly, it’s…the person I became when I discovered it.”

Leon’s voice lowered as his shelving brought him closer. “Are you the same person you were back then?” he asked.

Riku looked at his feet. “No,” he answered.

Leon slid his last book into place. “Are you willing to forgive yourself?”

The sunlight streamed through the gaps in shelves, the pattern dappling the mosaic floor in gold. “I…I think so.”

Leon’s hand rested on his shoulder. He was smiling when Riku looked up at him. 

“Then you’ve got nothing to be afraid of,” he said.

Riku blinked, his eyes going blurry, and he hurriedly swiped a hand across them. He cleared his throat against the lump rising in it.

Leon gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, then headed back towards the table under the stairs for a new stack of books.

Riku took a few steadying breaths, and followed.

* * *

“Where does magic come from?”

Riku tucked one leg underneath him on the bench, leaning his head on his hand. The repetitive tapping of Sora’s pencil on the table beside him lulled him into a daze.

“Anyone?” Merlin prompted. “Neither of you?”

Riku could barely string two words together after the day he’d had. He glanced at Sora, whose eyes were glazed over as he drummed his pencil.

Merlin gave a long-suffering sigh. “Magic stems from three roots,” he said matter-of-factly. “The heart, the mind, and the cosmos. One must access the strength and clarity of purpose of the heart in order to generate power.” He turned to the blackboard behind him, scratching out a series of notes. “The mind gives focus, direction, and intention to the will of the heart.”

He pointed his chalk at Sora, and Sora righted himself. “A sharp mind is as essential to a keyblade master as a strong heart.”

Riku choked down a laugh, and Sora elbowed him in the side.

“The cosmos,” Merlin continued, “is the energy inherent to the universe. It is built on connection, and hinges on the interdependence of all things. To manipulate the environment, one must have a respect and an understanding of the vast web of wisdom and symbiosis upon which he calls.”

Merlin scratched another series of notes on the blackboard.

“Now,” he said, “as keyblade wielders, the two of you have access to the will of the cosmos; it is _respect_ that the wielder must—” Merlin cut himself off.

Sora’s eyes had started to drift closed, and Merlin rapped his knuckles on the table to startle him back to wakefulness.

“Am I interrupting your beauty rest, Master Sora?”

Sora flushed. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t sleep enough.”

“I should say so,” Merlin chided. “Adequate rest is imperative to balanced learning.”

Sora slumped back against the wall, crossing his arms petulantly over his chest.

Merlin continued his lecture, extending the web of concepts on his blackboard until it stretched to the corners. Riku did his best to follow along, but his capacity for complex thought was long gone.

He glanced over at Sora again. His arms were still crossed, but his expression had softened back into the glassy-eyed haze Riku had seen on him thousands of times growing up. Sora was practical, tactile; he needed to have his hands on something to even have a chance at taking it in. This must have been torture for him. 

Not that it was doing much more for Riku, but he was willing to blame that on the hours of blind panic over the thought of telling Sora he’d been hopelessly in love with him for more than a decade.

Riku leaned his head into his hand, watching the sweep of Sora’s lashes as his eyelids fluttered drowsily over his freckled cheeks. The rich, layered tapestry of them dusted around Sora’s eyes made their sky-blue seem even deeper, a window into bright daylight nestled in a galaxy of warm, chestnut stars.

In the years they’d been away from the islands—and Riku tried not to think too hard or for too long about those years—the charming array of freckles that dotted his face had faded. Being home for a while had brought them back to life, as if the sunlight had revitalized something in Sora, too, that was eager to shine again.

Merlin slapped his chalk down on the table, and Riku snapped to attention.

“Do you believe this doesn’t concern you, Master Riku?” Merlin asked, his tone severe.

Riku felt his face go hot. “I’m sorry, Merlin.”

“I had hoped to teach more attentive pupils,” Merlin said dryly, “but I suppose you’ll do. As I was saying, Master Riku, a reliable command of magic requires the caster to have a clarity of vision, purpose, and self that few individuals possess. This can be learned, of course, but it takes years of rigorous study and reflection. Riku, you seek a balanced command of the darkness, do you not?”

Riku nodded hesitantly, and Sora stiffened at his side. 

“Yuffie tells me that you are struggling to achieve it.”

“Yes,” Riku answered, and a tight knot started to form in his chest. “I’m…I’m working on my clarity of self.”

“Very good,” Merlin said. “It can be a great challenge to realize the potential of one’s heart when one is clouded by fear or doubt. Darkness feeds on that which is uncertain—to gain mastery over it, you must strive for certainty in all things.”

Merlin turned back to the blackboard, but Riku didn’t hear a word after that. He clenched his fist against his thigh, a stirring of anxiety rising in him until he had to swallow it down to keep it off his face.

He jumped at the brush of something at his side.

Sora was sliding a hand towards his along the bench, and he prodded Riku’s thigh until Riku obediently uncurled his fist.

Sora hooked his pinky finger with Riku’s, his hand coming to rest between them. It was a small, simple point of contact, but it brought Riku firmly back down to earth. His heart fluttered against his ribcage, and peered at Sora from the corner of his eye.

He was dutifully watching Merlin, his eyes bright and attentive. Behind the curled fingers where he rested his chin, where only Riku could see, the beginning of a smile was blooming.

Riku squeezed his pinky around Sora’s, and gave Merlin his (almost) complete attention.

* * *

When the night had long since fallen and the dawn was creeping steadily closer, Riku was still awake.

He cupped one hand over his heart. His eyes drifted closed, and he tried to feel the weight of the universe pressing down on him, reaching inside.

Riku had realized when he was young that there was something in him that was bigger than he could understand. He could stretch his fingers toward it and plunge into its depths without ever reaching the bottom, a vast, directionless expanse where he could have dissolved into nothingness without a shred of himself left behind.

He thought, if this was love, he was certain he would drown in it.

Riku splayed his fingers into the streaks of silver moonlight over his head, as if he could capture them. He had discovered the worst of himself alongside this love, and he was terrified of becoming that person again. He wanted to understand—he _needed_ to understand—how to love from the place in his heart that made Sora proud to know him, even when he didn’t deserve it.

He remembered what Leon had asked him, turning each word over in his head. _Are you willing to forgive yourself?_

Riku drew in his hand, curling his fingers over his chest.

He gathered his heart, and climbed out of bed.

  
  


The lamps along the street were lit, each one throwing a haze of soft yellow light into the still, deep night. Only the distant babble of running water and the faint song of crickets disrupted the comfortable quiet of Radiant Garden at night.

The mosaic in the town center was muted in silver and blue under the moonlight. The fresh flower beds at its edges were dappled with the swaying bulbs of late spring tulips, the fruits of Yuffie and Sora’s tireless effort.

Riku crossed to the edge of the plaza, where the stone wall rose at a gentle slant to a single peak. He settled himself beneath it, shuffling to face the rows of silent residential streets and darkened windows. 

He pulled his legs underneath him and shut his eyes. He drew in a long, steady breath, listening for the faint whisper of the darkness in his center.

The night seemed to grow denser, more secret over the space of a breath. A fluctuating shadow passed over his eyelids, and he parted them, the yellow light of the street lamps dimmed and swimming in a smoky haze.

Ansem sat before him on the cobblestone, mimicking his position. “So, you’ve come back.”

Riku took a slow breath.

“Ansem,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”

“Such formality,” Ansem mused, his smile sharp. “Surely we’re on more personable terms than those.”

A stab of cold, deep-rooted fear shot through Riku, and then a hot flush of anger. He let them both run their course, then let them slip through his fingers, and let them go.

“Maybe,” he conceded. “Since we’re so friendly, then, can I trust you to be honest with me?”

Ansem tilted his head to the side. “That depends on your willingness to trust,” he said, and his eyes glinted. “You did always have such a penchant for trust.”

Riku ignored that. “Why did you choose me?”

Ansem ran a hand over his chin. “Choose?” he echoed. “That is difficult to say. The power of the keyblade slept in you. Your unfortunate island sat at a crossroads of time and circumstance. And you possessed great strength, which made you unlikely to break.”

Ansem’s body duplicated and encircled him, a hall of mirrors showing him only one distorted image.

“If you would like to know what I saw in you,” Ansem continued, “it was not your strength, but your turmoil. Darkness thrives in chaos, and your heart was in such a pitiable state…” The mirrored visions of him dissipated one by one, receding into Riku’s peripheral vision until the only presence that remained lingered at his shoulder. 

Ansem set a hand against it, his fingers biting into the tendon.

Riku breathed in. He breathed out.

“Poor, uncertain Riku,” Ansem murmured. “So eager to impress, so desperate for escape, so willing to believe your despair could be wished away.” Ansem’s shadow fell across him until it swallowed up his own, their edges blurred into one on the cobblestone street. “Truthfully, _Master_ Riku,” he said, “you had cast out so much of your heart before we ever set our sights on you, it took precious little to cast out what remained.”

“How did that work out for you?” Riku said, his voice low and measured.

Ansem scoffed. The weight of the hand on Riku’s shoulder dissipated, and he returned to his place, mirroring Riku’s posture from across the darkened plaza.

“I underestimated you,” he admitted. “A mistake I’ll not soon repeat. But you would be wise to remember that it was you who invited me in.”

Riku looked down, where his hands were laced in his lap.

“You were the first to recognize me,” he said softly. “You didn’t deserve the privilege, and I didn’t deserve what you did with it.” He traced the line of his palm with his thumb. “Still,” he said, “thank you.”

Ansem eyed him incredulously for a moment. He raised his chin in reproach. “Your gratitude is misplaced,” he said. “I wish you only luck on your exam. I will be with you, boy, as always.”

With that, Ansem’s form gradually melted back into the night that surrounded them until he was gone.

Riku stared at the empty space before him, a sea of nebulous emotion spreading through his chest. After a moment, he rose, brushing the dust from the legs of his pants.

In the flower bed at his side, he noticed the lolling bulb of a tulip, its stem bowing under the weight of suspending it.

He reached out and brushed his fingers over its velvet petals, tilting the bulb up to face the sky. The sun would rise for it, soon.

As he started back towards the cottage, following the streak of a distant galaxy overhead, something came back to him: the steady, gentle voice of a stranger as he drew Riku’s hand to the grip of an unfamiliar blade.

_No more borders around, or below, or above, so long as you champion the ones you love._

Riku looked up at the carpet of vibrant stars, each one a gem glittering in the black void of space. A vast universe for him to run through, always somewhere he would rather be, always somewhere to hide.

He had taken the long way around, but there was only one place he wanted to stay.

* * *

The cottage was dark and silent. The only illumination as Riku entered was a thin ribbon of silver arcing through the kitchen, and he skirted carefully around the table, mindful of each step. He tread lightly down the hall, keeping his ear tuned for the stir of his friends as he passed their rooms. 

He brushed by his own, leaving it undisturbed, and continued on to the door at the end.

He cracked it quietly open.

Sora was deeply asleep, curled on his side with his knees pulled up towards the slow rise and fall of his chest. His lashes fluttered as the door ghosted open.

Riku toed off his shoes as he crossed the room, then tugged back the comforter and nestled himself inside the warm sanctuary at Sora’s side. The indent of his weight in the center of the mattress drew them together like a gentle gravity.

Sora stirred.

“Riku,” he said, his voice coarse and thick with sleep. His chin nestled against the top of Riku’s head, his leg hooking over Riku’s hip, and he wrapped his arms around Riku’s shoulders in one groggy sweep. He pulled Riku in and gathered him up, almost instinctively, like they were kids again. 

Riku’s heart swelled in his chest until he thought it would break. He dislodged an arm from between their bodies and threaded it around Sora’s waist, burying his face in the warmth of his shoulder. He let himself get lost in Sora’s familiar smell, let it spin him back through countless salt-swept, sun-bleached days and balmy summer nights, when everything came easily and the islands held everything they needed in the world.

“S’matter?” Sora slurred above him.

“Bad dream,” Riku lied.

Sora shifted, so his mouth brushed the crown of Riku’s head. “Wanna borrow mine?” he mumbled.

Riku was trying to parse what that could possibly mean when Sora started murmuring into his hair, a well of warmth spreading from where his breath whispered through it, low and wandering and only half there. 

“We built a bonfire,” he said, “and our friends were coming…it wouldn’t light…you lit it for me…from a star…”

Riku squeezed his eyes shut. He tucked his face against Sora’s chest, where his voice resonated in a low vibration that Riku could have evaporated into without the tether of Sora's arms around him.

“Went for sticks…” Sora continued, the words growing slowly garbled. “We were little…’n you carried me…on your shoulders…” His hands slid into Riku’s hair. “Trust you,” he said, and he might have been talking in his sleep. “I trust you, Riku…”

Riku tightened his grip around Sora’s waist, and a painfully familiar ache rose up in him, his throat going tight and narrow. 

_I can’t keep running,_ he realized. _Not from any of it. Especially not from this._

If he was going to be better—if he wanted to be a meaningful part of Sora’s life—then he needed to tell him the truth. He made Sora a promise he intended to keep. From now on, he intended to keep every promise he made to Sora.

“Riku,” Sora whispered.

“Yeah?”

But he was already asleep, and it was only moments before Riku drifted off after him with his ear pressed against the steady, soothing rhythm of Sora’s heartbeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @theFauxsynder on twitter continues to be an incredible gift and has made [a gorgeous piece of art](https://twitter.com/TheFauxsynder/status/1257708719011442689?s=20) for the closing scene in this chapter!!


	4. What's it Like?

When they were kids, their windows were so close together that they could stretch a length of string and twin cans between them, mounted on screw-in hooks on the sill. Yanking on one end would set the other rattling against the window pane, a makeshift telephone line from bedroom to bedroom.

Sora woke up in the middle of the night to the tell-tale clatter of aluminum on glass. He stuck his head out. 

Riku was gesturing frantically at him, pointing at the sill of his own window.

Sora rubbed his eyes and picked up the can. Across the way, Riku picked up his and put it to his mouth. 

There was a rattly, crackly noise in his ear, but he couldn’t make out any words.

He leaned over his windowsill. “Riku!” He tried to make the whisper carry as far as he could, which didn’t make it very much of a whisper. 

Riku’s answering call came in a similar tone: “What?”

“I can’t hear anything.”

Riku eyed the floor of his room and shuffled back a few steps, then tugged the string of the can. Sora cupped it over his ear and leaned back until he could feel Riku pulling on the other end. 

Riku’s voice piped directly into his ear, quiet and tinny, but clear: _“Is it working?”_

Sora giggled. He put the can to his mouth. “Yeah.”

_“Were you sleeping?”_

“Well I’m not _now,”_ Sora muttered. “Why were you rattling my window, anyway?” 

Across the stretch of night between them, Riku’s shadowed form pointed directly up. 

Sora looked at his ceiling. He could hear Riku’s laughter even without the can.

_“No, dummy, outside.”_

Sora leaned out his window and looked up. The night was moonless, and the stars were vibrant and dense, the smear of a distant galaxy barely visible beyond.

“It’s pretty,” he said into his can. “But why—”

_“Shh—keep watching.”_

Sora frowned, but he kept his eyes trained on the sky. Then, directly overhead, two silvery pinpricks streaked across it and vanished into the inky black horizon. 

“Woah, a meteor shower!” 

Riku’s voice in his ear was low and excited. _“Hey, sneak out with me,”_ he said. _“My mom says it’s supposed to last all night. Let’s go to the island and watch.”_

“What?” Sora tugged nervously on the hem of his shirt. “We’ve never taken the boat at night before.”

_“What, are you scared?”_

“I—I am not!”

 _“Then let’s do it,”_ Riku urged. _“C’mon, Sora, it’s not like we’ll be alone. You’ll have me, right?”_

Sora shuffled his feet. He looked back up at the sky overhead, where another streak of light was disappearing. “Okay,” he said, and all at once he was buzzing with energy. He grinned at Riku’s silhouette. Somehow he could tell that Riku was grinning back. “I’ll meet you at the street corner!”

  
  


Riku was already reclining against the wooden signpost with a gas lantern dangling from one hand and a zip-up sweatshirt tugged on over his pajamas when Sora stumbled to a stop at the end of the road. He straightened when he spotted Sora coming, slinging his bag over his shoulder. 

“Rotten egg,” he teased, prodding Sora in the side.

Sora slapped away his hand with a nervous giggle. “My mom almost caught me!”

A cool breeze rolled off the ocean, and he shivered.

“You didn’t even bring a jacket?” Riku chided.

Sora glowered at him. “Mom!” he repeated.

They started towards the pier, the lantern light stretching their shadows into formless, shifting giants. The docks were abandoned, the rowboat bobbing ambiently in the tide, and Riku hung the lantern on the hook at its bow before he stepped confidently in.

He held out a hand to Sora.

Sora looked at the dock under his feet. “I don’t know, Riku, maybe this isn’t such a good idea…”

“Trust me,” Riku said with a smile. “I’ll protect you.”

Sora glanced back towards the town, then at Riku’s waiting hand.

He reached for it, and stepped into the boat. It lurched and dipped under his weight, and he yelped as he lost his balance and toppled in, crashing into Riku as he went.

Riku shoved him, laughing. “Nice one!”

“You were supposed to catch me!” Sora groused.

Riku settled himself at the bow, reaching for the cloth-wrapped oars, and Sora loosened the hitch on the dock and tugged the rope back into the boat. He wiped the ocean slime on his shorts. “If you get tired, we can switch,” he said.

Riku’s mouth curled up at the corner. “I won’t get tired,” he said.

“Show-off,” Sora grumbled. He settled onto the bench, and it wasn’t long before the dock was just a pinprick against the faintly lit shape of the town.

Sora braced his hands behind him and leaned back, turning his eyes to the sky and sprawling his legs in front of him. Every once and a while, a comet would flare silently across the expanse, and between the sky and the ocean Sora felt like a tiny speck in the hugeness of it all.

Sora’s eyes had adjusted to the faint starlight by the time they landed on the dock. In the depth of the night, every familiar landmark loomed large and alien over them. 

“Told you we’d be okay,” Riku said, and his voice seemed to get lost in it. He unhooked the lantern from the bow and took Sora’s hand to hoist him onto the pier, and Sora huddled close and didn’t let go. 

“Come on,” Riku said, drawing his arm from Sora’s grip until he could clasp their hands. “I brought matches. We can start a fire.”

They wandered the shore, looking for stones and pieces of driftwood, and the familiarity of the sand beneath his bare feet began to wear away Sora’s unease. Before long, he was sprinting through the surf with Riku laughing at his heels, kicking sand and foam behind him as he went.

When they’d gathered up all they could carry, they found a stretch of dry beach and dug out a small fire pit, arranging their sparse kindling into a tower inside a circle of stones. Riku struck a match over a thin strip of driftwood, and Sora tugged a faded old quilt from Riku’s bag and stretched it over the sand. He weighed down the corners with the handful of stones that were left and sprawled himself out beneath the sky.

When the fire was popping and hissing resolutely, Riku crawled over and settled at his side. His shoulder was warm and comforting where it bumped against Sora’s. 

They watched the stars fall like raindrops streaming over glass. Sora could almost feel the world falling through space.

“Wow,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” Riku answered reverently.

He reached for Riku’s hand. Riku turned up his palm, and Sora felt safer with something to hold on to.

For a while, they just let it wash over them, tethered to each other in the face of the vast universe.

“Hey, Riku,” Sora said, “If we go out there someday…we’ll stay together, won’t we?”

Riku turned to face him, shuffling onto his side. “You worried?” he said.

“No,” Sora lied.

There was a gentle tug on his hand, and Sora turned reluctantly. Riku was looking at him, his eyes warm and full. He squeezed Sora’s fingers.

“We will,” he said. “Promise.”

Sora twisted towards him. He inched closer, the space between them growing small and secretive. “Swear?”

Riku stretched out his fingers and pressed their palms flat together, then locked his pinky with Sora’s. The firelight ringed his hair in warm gold, and his eyes were bright with the shimmering reflection of the stars.

“Swear,” he said.

Sora stared at him, and he remembered the paopu tree. It wasn’t the season for fruit, but maybe…if one of the blooms was early, maybe…

A gust of wind rolled over them, chilled with ocean spray, and Sora shivered again.

Riku’s mouth quirked up at the corner. “Cold?” he asked.

“No,” Sora said, and he folded an arm over his chest to hide the goosebumps. 

“Yes, you are.”

Sora looked him up and down. “Hey, how big is your sweatshirt?”

“I’m not giving it up just because you didn’t wear a jacket,” Riku said flatly.

“Fine, then make some space!”

Riku let out an startled yelp as Sora wedged an arm under his side. 

“Hold still, hold still!” he insisted through giggles. He unzipped the sweatshirt and bundled Sora up in his arms, fighting with the zipper behind Sora’s back until he could trap him inside. 

Sora wrapped his arms around Riku’s middle with a grin, and Riku let out an exaggerated sigh. He settled his chin against the top of Sora’s head. “Warmer?” he said.

Sora nuzzled into his shoulder. “Yes,” he answered smugly.

Riku laughed again, and Sora felt it in his chest. He wriggled upward until his nose squished against Riku’s, and Riku tipped their foreheads together until Sora had to go practically cross-eyed to look at him.

“Good,” Riku said, and Sora beamed at him. 

He tucked his head into the crook of Riku’s neck and forgot about the stars and the vastness of space and the sand in his clothes, forgot about everything but the rise and fall of Riku’s chest under his cheek.

Soon, even that was gone. 

  
  


The next morning, they woke to a swarm of terrified parents descending upon them.

Sora got grounded for so long he gave up counting the days, and Riku got a talking-to that Sora could hear from all the way next door. 

Neither of these held a candle to their real punishment. When Sora went to bed that night, he discovered that their tin can telephone line had been cut, and the hook in the sill was gone. The can was sitting face-down on his bedside table with the string coiled underneath, like his mom was trying to make an example out of it.

Sora cried for hours, but he couldn’t change their minds. Riku couldn’t either, and he worked at it for a week. 

Life got a little bit quieter. Sora started sleeping through the night, and the can gathered dust on the shelf over his bed. Eventually, they accepted it as another injustice in the tragedy of growing up.

On moonless nights, when he couldn’t sleep, Sora would lay in bed with the cut string threaded through his fingers and the can cupped over his ear and imagine he could still hear Riku’s voice, murmuring to him through the dark.

* * *

Sora rose to slow consciousness, blinking through the haze clouding his vision. The ceiling over his head was unfamiliar, unexpected, and he had a moment of disorientation where he felt adrift in time.

He stretched an arm out to his side, aimlessly searching for something, but his hand only curled into cool, empty sheets. He couldn’t remember what exactly he expected to find in their place.

After a moment, he scrubbed at his face and groaned. He peeled himself out of bed and stumbled into the hallway, absently kicking a ball of lint along the floorboards as he went, and the clink of ceramic and the shuffle of movement spilled from the kitchen. Sora hoped that meant he still had a chance at breakfast.

He paused at the end of the hall. Riku was standing over the sink, leaning against the counter with his head bowed and his eyes closed. He looked exhausted.

Sora cast around for the right words, but before he could say anything at all, another voice rang through the room.

“Rough night?” Leon said.

Riku turned towards Leon’s voice, away from the sink, away from Sora. 

He chuckled. “Something like that.”

Sora suddenly felt like a voyeur. He took a few slow steps back. 

“You wanna talk about it?” Leon asked.

Riku sighed, pushing the hair back from his face, and wandered away from the sink. He disappeared from Sora’s line of sight.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Sora leaned into the wall, the beat of his heart brought into sharp focus. He really, really shouldn’t. He _really_ shouldn’t. Riku would talk to him when he was ready. He’d promised that he wouldn’t shut him out, and Sora trusted him.

But…what could Riku possibly be willing to tell _Leon_ and not him? When had they even gotten that close? 

There was a childish twinge of jealousy in his gut, and Sora chewed his lip. Was he above eavesdropping?

“I’ll wait, then.”

There was the hollow scuff of wood dragging along the floor, followed by a muffled thump.

 _I’m not,_ Sora thought in dismay, and he leaned flat into the wall, begging the floorboards not to give him away.

Riku sighed again, and there was another series of scuffs and settling. “Did you ever feel like it wasn’t worth the trouble?” he asked.

There was a sniff, and the creak of wood. 

Riku huffed out a laugh. “I mean, I thought for a long time that I didn’t need any of it. Dating, or…or love, or…”

Sora’s eyes widened. He pressed his ear against the wall until it hurt.

“I feel like I’ve been fighting so hard for a chance at something normal, but I don’t think I’m destined for normalcy, anyway. And even if I was, I…” Riku paused, and for a moment, Sora worried he’d been noticed; but then he lowered his voice, and continued: “I thought, if I pretended it didn’t matter, I wouldn’t have to face it. But it does. And I do.”

Quiet settled over the kitchen. Sora watched droplets part from the faucet tap, and there was something immense and buoyant rising inside him that he didn’t recognize; something that threatened to drag his feet out from under him.

“Riku,” Leon said gently, “you deserve to have that in your life.”

“I know. I just don’t—” Riku’s voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “I just don’t expect it.”

For a moment, the only sound was his soft, even breathing. Then there was the groan of settling wood, and Leon spoke. “I think you’ll be surprised,” he said. “Besides, you obviously aren’t the only tortured gay soul in the universe, seeing as you’ve met me.”

The feeling in Sora changed, and whatever was pulling at him swept him completely away. He lingered just long enough to hear Leon add, “...judging by your social scene, I’m willing to bet it’s more than just me…” before he turned on the balls of his feet and disappeared back into his room.

  
  


Sora sprawled out over the bed and tried to get a grip.

 _I can’t believe I freaked out at him for nothing,_ he thought. _He must think I’m such a baby. Why didn’t he just say something? He could have told me. I never gave him a reason to think he couldn’t, did I? Did he really think I would care if he likes boys?_

_And…why would he tell Leon and not me?_

He turned over. The sunlight streaming through the window cast a thin shadow across a strip of peeling paint, and Sora fought the urge to pick it off.

 _Am I jealous?_ he wondered. _It’s not like I’m being replaced. Why should it bother me if he wants to date?_

He turned to his other side. The door might as well have been an ocean away for how impossible it seemed to open. _I don't own him,_ he thought. _I can’t expect him not to have friends, or…or boyfriends just because I'm feeling insecure. That's my problem, not his._

_And maybe our friendship isn't what he might have with someone else, but it's something, isn't it?_

He rolled onto his back again, and one thought grew larger and larger in his heart until it weighed down on him like the sky was falling: 

_Someone else will be the most important person in Riku’s life, someday._

That was love, wasn’t it?

* * *

The committee made their way through the hills of the residential district, the sun bright and hot in the cloudless blue sky. There was plenty of work ahead before the residents could move back home, but this part of Radiant Garden was starting to look like a neighborhood again.

Leon hadn’t said much about this project over lunch—just that he’d been waiting to tackle it until they had extra hands. He led them through the empty streets with a city map tucked under one arm and a canvas bag of gardening equipment under the other, Cid and Tifa chatting pleasantly at his heels. 

Behind them, climbing the cracked stone steps over the canal, was Riku. Sora kept glancing up to watch his ponytail sway at the back of his neck, and he snagged his feet on the upturned cobblestones every time.

Riku’s eye caught his over his shoulder, and he slowed until he could match step at Sora’s side.

“Hey,” he said.

Sora tried to focus on the ground in front of them instead of the confused flutter in his chest. “Hey,” he said.

“Um,” Riku said, and he reached up to sweep a hand over the nape of his neck. “I wanted to say. About the other day, I…”

Sora looked at him, the flutter in his chest growing until it felt like a trapped bird.

“I wanted to tell you I’m, um, working on it. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting there.” 

Riku pushed a strand of his willowy bangs behind his ear, his gaze lowered, and Sora suddenly wasn’t sure he was ready himself. 

_Do I tell him I already know?_ He thought. _I should let him say it himself, right? What do I say when he does? Am I supposed to act surprised, or—_

Sora’s foot caught on a raised slab of cobblestone, and he reeled forward with a startled shout.

A hand caught him at the wrist, and then an arm at the waist as his feet went out from underneath him. A loose strand of Riku’s hair tickled his face, and Riku blinked at him, a combination of alarm and amusement coloring his expression.

After a second, he cracked a wide, fond smile, bright and earnest as sunlight through canopy. “Nice one,” he said, and Sora’s mind went quiet as Riku clasped his hand.

His palm was warm and rough. He pulled Sora to his feet as effortlessly as if he weighed nothing, and then in towards his chest, and Sora was somehow caught off-guard by his smell—like breeze off the water at night, and the soft lavender of Aerith’s soap—and something milder and more intimate, like clean sweat, body heat…

Riku looked down at their hands, still clasped between them, and Sora pulled quickly away.

“Thanks,” he said, and his voice came out a little higher than he expected.

Riku tucked his hands into his pockets with a sideways grin. “Watch your step, okay?” he said, and he quickened his stride to catch up with their friends.

For the rest of the walk, Sora trailed well behind and followed his advice.

  
  


When they arrived, the sight brought everything inside of Sora to a standstill.

It was a home once, and a well-loved one. There were still the withered husks of flowers strewn around the chunks of clay from the window boxes, even though the windows themselves were nothing more than empty frames. Half of the structure was open to the clear blue sky, reduced to splintered wood and cracked plaster beneath the hulking mass of stone sprawling through its center like a fallen giant.

Sora’s heart sunk into his stomach. In front of him, Riku’s shoulders went stiff, his hands balling into fists.

Merlin circled around the wreckage. “Ah, helping hands!” he exclaimed. “Today is certainly our day. I invited the family to come by in an hour or so. Come now, come in, where you can see.”

He ushered them forward, and Sora stepped over a jutting piece of fence to peer into the shell of the house.

“There,” Merlin said, pointing to a small opening where a pair of crossed beams were pinned against the foundation by the stone. Between them, miraculously unharmed at the foot of a half-flattened dresser, was a polished oak box no bigger than a loaf of bread. “I’ll require magical assistance to remove the stone. Riku, Sora, I trust that both of you are proficient with gravitational magic.”

Sora nodded.

Merlin glanced past him. “Master Riku?” he said expectantly.

Sora looked up. Riku was staring at the box, his mouth open, his brow knit. “I…”

There was a look Riku got on his face when he was trying to work out how to single-handedly stitch the universe back together, and Sora wished he wasn’t so familiar with it. He reached for Riku’s hand and gave it a quick, comforting squeeze.

He turned toward Merlin. “He can do it,” Sora said, and he hoped Riku could hear the confidence in his voice.

“Excellent,” Merlin said, and he clapped his hands in front of him. “Now, we’ll need to be positioned strategically…”

They arranged themselves around the corners of the yard, and the others gave them a wide berth. Merlin gave a series of rapid-fire instructions, drawing his wand from the sleeve of his robe, but Sora kept his eyes on Riku through the gaps in the collapsed walls.

He wished that Riku could see himself the way Sora did: not for the wreckage of a stranger’s home, but for the person standing in the heart of his fear just for a chance at fixing something, just to find what mattered in the pieces that were left.

He wished Riku could see himself for how far he had come—for how brave, how selfless, how incredible he was—

“Ready,” Merlin began, and Sora tore his eyes away and braced Oathkeeper in front of him.

“Now!”

He summoned all the strength he could borrow, funneling it from his heart to his blade. The boulder started to rise, and on the other side of the wreckage, Riku stood steadfast, his face fixed in intense concentration.

When it was high enough to clear the half-collapsed wall, they eased it back towards the street beyond.

“That’s the way,” Merlin said excitedly. “Just a bit more…steady…and… _release!”_

The boulder dropped with a thud that shook the ground, and there was a collective sigh of relief. When Sora peered over at him again, Riku was leaning into the wall beside him and dragging a wrist over his forehead, his eyes closed. The crease in his brow was gone. There was no sign of darkness.

The last of Sora’s tension left him, and he dismissed his keyblade and wiped his sweaty palms on the front of his pants. 

Leon passed out heavy gloves from the gardening bag, and for a while there was only determined silence as the wreckage slowly transformed back into the shell of a home.

  
  


Sora swept the flecks of glass and bitter dust away and dragged himself forward along the ground, peering through the gap in the crossed beams. The dark, polished corner of the box was clearly visible between them, but he barely grazed the latch when he stretched his fingers toward it.

The debris crunched at his ear as Riku leaned over him. “Anything?” he said.

Sora deflated, dropping his arm into the dust.“I can’t reach it,” he said.

Riku adjusted a glove and reached up to tighten his ponytail. He laid flat on his stomach and and inched over until he bumped Sora’s side, blowing a lock of stray hair out of his eye with a sharp puff. “Scoot over,” he said, giving Sora a playful nudge. “My arms are longer.”

He shuffled out of the way, and Riku reached through the gap all the way to the shoulder, groping at the box. It snagged on one of the beams with a stubborn _clunk._

Sora lifted on his elbows. “Guys, can you give us a hand?”

Leon dropped an armful of splintered wood in a pile and brushed off his shirt, and Tifa and Cid dropped the sheet of plaster they were carrying. Leon prodded Riku in the leg with his boot as they gathered around. 

“If you like that arm, you should probably move,” he said.

“Careful, now!” Merlin shouted from the lawn, the enchanted paper fan at his side spinning fitfully when he lowered his book. “We mustn’t break it!”

“You feel like helping out, mister wizard?” Tifa grumbled as she braced beneath one of the beams at the shoulder.

Melin leaned back in his chair. “Me? Heavens, no. By all means, don’t let these old bones get in the way,” he said, and he buried his nose in his book again.

Riku dragged himself backward and settled onto his heels, and Sora took up a place beside Leon at the second beam. Cid adjusted his grip and gave them a short nod.

Sora pushed upward as hard as he could. The beams started to rise, inch by inch, until the remains of the dresser splintered beneath them.

The opening surrounding the chest expanded, and Riku shuffled forward and stuck his arm in again.

Sora’s hands palms started to sweat, and the beam suddenly felt heavier in his hands. “Riku, come on,” he urged.

“Hang on, almost…got it!” he said, and he yanked the box out into the open.

There was a collective sigh of relief, and Riku climbed to his feet with the box in his arms while they carefully lowered the beams back to the ground. 

“Nice work,” Leon said. “We can finish up the foundation and call it a day. We’ll worry about the rest when we have a real crew.”

They started to disburse, and Sora brushed the dirt from his shirt and headed for the lawn, but Leon caught him at the shoulder. He beckoned Sora off to the side, where the unbroken wall beyond the garden offered something like privacy.

“You’re scheduled for patrol tonight,” Leon reminded him when the others were out of earshot. “It’s been a demanding morning—if you need to tap out, let me know.”

Sora reached up to massage the ache in his shoulder. His arms still felt like jelly, but he wasn’t sure he could go back to the cottage and sit with his thoughts. “I can handle it,” he said.

Leon nodded. “Yuffie’s your backup, if you change your mind.” 

Sora hummed a noncommittal affirmation.

Leon eyed him. “You sure you’re good?” he asked. “You’ve been quiet.”

“Me?” Sora shrugged. “No, I mean…I’m, you know.”

“You’re never quiet,” Leon added dubiously.

Sora fiddled with the zipper of his jacket. “Leon,” he started, “you like boys, right?”

Leon's expression froze, and Sora’s cheeks started to burn.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, “I’m sorry, I know that’s not really my business—”

“No,” Leon interrupted. “It’s fine, really. It’s just—” he combed a hand through his hair, and a disbelieving smile flickered over his mouth. “I thought it was funny.” Leon eyed him again, more intently this time. “Why do you ask?”

Sora rocked on his heels. “What’s it like?” he asked.

Leon looked taken aback. “What’s it _like?”_ he echoed. “It’s, uh…it’s like…”

Sora was starting to worry he’d said something wrong when Leon finally spoke. Each word was slow and deliberate, as if he was gathering the thought for the first time. “You know…you spend so long thinking you’re missing some essential piece, like you’re empty somewhere you’re supposed to be full,” he said. “But I was always whole. I just…didn’t know there was something in me already that I couldn’t understand.” He glanced at Sora with a frown. “Does that make sense?”

Through the empty window frame, Sora caught the shine of the mahogany box under Riku’s arm as he and Merlin spoke in low, insistent tones.

“Not really,” he said, “but…thanks.”

He could feel Leon’s eyes on him, working up to a question, and he was frantically searching for a way out of the conversation when an unfamiliar voice rang through the square. 

“My mother’s chest!”

A broad, sturdy-looking man and a tall woman in a blue dress appeared at the end of the street. Between them, tottering along with an arm looped through the man’s for support, was the oldest woman Sora had ever seen. Her face was worn and creased by time, her posture hunched forward. Her hair was a bright, brittle white, and the shawl around her shoulders nearly swallowed her. 

Merlin greeted them with an enthusiastic wave, and Leon disappeared from Sora’s side.

Before anyone had time to say hello, the old woman brushed past them and made a beeline for Riku. 

He held out the oak box instinctively, his face paralyzed in surprise, and she took it in her withered hands. For a moment, she ran her fingertips reverently around the iron of the latch, her eyes welling with tears. Then she blinked them away with a toothless smile and reached up to pull Riku into a tight hug.

He stooped towards her, his hands extended confusedly at his sides, and a rush of affection swept through Sora. He looked about as out-of-his-depth as he got. 

The woman spoke softly against his shoulder, the words lost to Sora, and then kissed him quickly on the cheek. She released him and turned towards Merlin, taking up the man’s arm again for support, but Sora was still watching Riku.

He was frozen where he stood, his eyes dazed and wide. He raised a hand to his cheek, grazing his fingers over the place she had kissed him.

Maybe it was the look on his face, like such a small forgiveness was so completely outside the realm of his understanding; or the stir of the breeze snagging his hair at the corner of his mouth; or maybe just the dirt he unwittingly smudged across his cheek when he touched it—but the ground suddenly shifted under Sora's feet, and something deep inside of him opened.

Sora sucked in a harsh breath and crossed the square, grabbing his bag where it leaned against the fencepost.

“I can’t do patrol,” he managed hurriedly as he brushed past Leon and the group of strangers alike. “Sorry, tell Yuffie I owe her one—”

“Hey, hang on—”

“I’m sorry, I—I have to go, like, now!”

He rushed down the steps to the street, his bag heavy over his shoulder, and he pretended not to hear when Leon called after him. When the square curved away from view, Sora picked up his pace until the stained wood and plaster of the empty houses blurred at the edges of his vision and the only sound he could hear was the hammering of his heart.

  
  


He stumbled into an alleyway at the bottom of the hill and flattened himself against the wall, sliding down it until he felt the cool, unyielding earth rise to meet him.

He clamped a hand over his eyes, his face turning iron-hot underneath it.

 _It should be me,_ he thought. _It’s supposed to be me._

Sora was suddenly dizzy. He pulled his knees up to his chest, burying his face in his arms. It felt like something was trying to kick its way out of him. 

Did Riku ever look at him and feel…feel like _this_ , like there was a fist squeezing against every beat of his heart?

Everything they had been through together—from clueless kids laying side-by-side under the stars to battle-weary soldiers, staring out at an alien horizon and quietly accepting that they might never see home again—that meant something, he _knew_ it did.

He remembered sitting next to Riku on strange new sands, watching the arcs of silvery moonlight streaked across his face, the only familiar thing at the end of the world. Like even then, he had nothing to fear. Like being stranded in the realm of darkness could be just another adventure, as long as he still had Riku.

A slow, insistent realization unfurled inside of him, and it felt at once blindingly obvious and entirely foreign, as if his heart had spoken it so many times that the words had stopped meaning anything at all.

 _Oh,_ he thought, _I’m in love with him._

  
  


Sora knew love _._ He felt it for his friends—for Kairi, for Donald and Goofy, for Leon and Yuffie and the whole restoration committee—and sometimes it filled up his heart until he thought he’d overflow.

He didn’t know it could be like this. He didn’t know it could be so wide and so bottomless and so earth-shaking, like everything had suddenly broken open. 

The universe was bigger, and more beautiful, and more important than he thought it was, and in the middle of it was Riku, and Sora loved him. 

Loved him like he thought he would never love. 

Loved him like he didn’t know he could.

Loved him.

* * *

  
  


“You okay?” Riku asked over breakfast.

Sora was startled out of his daze. “What?” he said, and he waved a dismissive hand, flinging toast crumbs across the table. “‘Course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re up before noon, for one,” Riku said with a smirk, and he raised his mug to his lips. “And you look like you lost a fight with a bus.”

Sora laughed a little too quickly, then bit it back. “I didn’t really sleep,” he said. 

Riku looked at him for a long moment, a touch of worry in his eyes. “Nightmares?” he said. 

“No,” Sora answered quickly. “Nothing—nothing like that. Just, um, thinking.”

Riku glanced into his mug. His fingertips brushed the ceramic, and he bit his lip. “Let me know if anything’s wrong?” he said, his voice lifting softly at the end.

“Yeah,” Sora said, and he offered Riku a small, genuine smile. “I will.”

Riku smiled back, and he turned his attention to his breakfast. 

Sora sipped at his tea and tried not to stare, because when he did he couldn’t seem to stop.

  
  


“Come on, Sora, focus up!”

Sora stumbled back, smearing the sweat from his face. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m blowing our whole day—”

“No,” Yuffie interrupted, _”both_ of you are blowing your whole day.” She turned towards Riku and planted her fists on her hips. “He’s underslept. What’s your excuse?”

“I don’t have one,” Riku answered miserably.

Sora leaned back into the stone wall of the square and dismissed his keyblade. “We’re never gonna get this,” he moaned. “We’re gonna fail our exam and Master Yen Sid is gonna make that face he makes when he’s wishing he had real students—”

Riku slumped forward. “Please don’t talk about that face,” he said hopelessly.

Yuffie let out a long, weary sigh, rubbing her fingers over her temples. “Look—you two _can_ get this. Sora, I’ve seen you D-link with _chickens.”_ She jabbed a finger in Riku’s direction. “And _you_ just had a hand in taking down the most powerful nobody in recent memory.”

“Hey!” Sora interjected. “I did that, too!”

Yuffie ignored him. “I know you’re both perfectly capable of this,” she said, “so I’m going to go sit on that bench and face the wall, and you two are going to sort out whatever mess you’re in, and yell for me when your heads are on straight.”

Yuffie spun, jamming her hands into her pockets, and stalked across the square. She folded her legs beneath her on the bench and faced away from them, her shoulders resolutely squared. 

Riku rose from his stance, rubbing the small of his back with a wince. He glanced at Sora from the corner of his eye. 

“One more shot?” he asked reluctantly.

Sora sighed. He summoned Oathkeeper and squared his feet, and Riku raised the Way to the Dawn and turned to face him.

“Ready?” he said. 

Sora took a long moment to breathe, and nodded.

Riku’s eyes drifted closed, his brow knitting, and a swell of dark fire climbed his blade. Sora adjusted his grip and tried to remember what Merlin had said about the cosmos, and he told himself that nothing was different, nothing had to be weird, if he could just pull himself together for a _second_ —

Riku swore, and Sora’s eyes snapped open.

The fire was inching up his arm again, and he dismissed the Way to the Dawn and waved it frantically away. 

He pressed his palms into his eyes with a frustrated groan. “You’re right,” he lamented. “We’re never gonna get it. Not while I’m like this.”

A flutter of guilt soured Sora’s stomach, and he chewed his lip. If this was anyone’s fault, it was his.

Sora caught Riku’s fingers in his, and this time he tried not to flinch away from the cocktail of desperate fear and manic joy that spiraled through him.

“Hey,” he said, “I wanna try something.”

He dismissed his keyblade and held out his other hand, and after a brief exchange of glances, Riku took it.

Sora tugged him closer, cupping his hands around Riku’s. He could feel the heat climbing up to his ears, but he let his eyes drift shut anyway. 

He stopped thinking about Merlin’s lessons. He stopped wondering if it was still okay to hold Riku’s hands. Somewhere in the invisible space between them was a connection, and Sora reached for it.

A steady resistance pushed back, like trying to wade upstream. Sora cracked an eye open. 

“Riku,” he said. “You’re guarding.”

Riku took a slow breath. He met Sora’s gaze, his face flushing, and Sora’s heart shook in his chest.

Just for now, he tried to let it.

“You gotta let me in,” he said softly, “right?”

Riku flushed deeper. “Right,” he said.

He turned up his palms in Sora’s hands and leaned in, as if his breath had drawn him forward. A current of energy moved between them, a tug on the link that bound their hearts, like the murmur of voices carried on the vibrations of a thread. 

Sora counted the creases in Riku’s palm, and listened.

A spark, then a flame, then a blossom of light spilled from their cupped hands, wisps of dark curling outward like the petals of an orchid as it filled the square.

Riku’s mouth fell open as he gazed around them. “It’s beautiful,” he murmured.

Sora blinked up at him, and he was afraid to say anything at all.

_Beautiful._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @theFauxsynder on twitter made fanart for [t w o](https://twitter.com/TheFauxsynder/status/1252341849492123661) [scenes](https://twitter.com/TheFauxsynder/status/1252361323939131393) in this chapter and i have officially ascended and left earth??
> 
> shoutout to my beta, the exceptional ManaGummi <3 find them on twitter @managummi and read their amazing fic and enjoy their amazing art!!


	5. You Lead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _From the movements you made  
>  And the soft gaze you gave,  
> You understood  
> And I knew it wouldn’t last,  
> But in the clean light you cast  
> I was good,  
> I was good…_
> 
> _All the years, my soul  
>  All the things you thought I did  
> This soulless kid was under all my skin  
> All the things I try to say remain within  
> I’m cooling in the clay  
> I’ve always been molded this way_
> 
> _—[Clean,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh7qikFginI)_ The Japanese House

Something had changed.

For days now—years, maybe—Riku’s heart had been a torrential force, and every effort he made to control or contain it had seemed to sink him deeper into its tides. But when he woke to the muffled sounds that had grown familiar over the past few weeks; the stir of footfalls beyond the door, the easy murmur of conversation, the gentle laughter, the clatter and thump and hiss of never-ending, light-footed housework; for once, his mind was quiet and clear as a bell. 

In the center of his chest was a warm, steady thrum, a second heartbeat as intimate and vital as the first. When he closed his eyes, he could feel the direction of its current, urging him towards home—towards Sora.

Riku sat up, blinking into the beam of sunshine that scattered across his raised hand. He set the soles of his feet against the rough wood of the bedroom floor, and it was stark and solid.

He crossed to the dresser. A narrow, delicately engraved mirror leaned into the wall behind it, and Riku caught a glimpse of himself as he bent over a drawer.

A lock of hair was straying into his eyelashes. He lifted a hand to it, trying to comb a wild snarl behind the curve of his ear.

He frowned at his reflection.

“It’s long,” he said.

  
  


As he pulled Aerith’s door closed behind him, Riku noticed that Yuffie’s was cracked and hanging ajar. He peered through it, where Yuffie was sitting cross-legged on her bed, crouching over an embroidery hoop with a large, unwieldy pile of what looked like canvas bunched around it.

Yuffie caught his eye and flushed, then hurriedly stuffed the project half under her pillow. “What, a girl can’t enjoy a little needlework in the comfort of her own home?” she snapped. “Don’t you have training or something?”

Riku backed away. “Sorry, jeez,” he answered, and he left the door cracked and headed for the kitchen. 

“…I’ll make some adjustments,” Cid was saying. “It ain’t perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothin’.”

Leon tugged the toolkit from Cid’s shoulder and set it against the doorframe. “You should take a break,” he said. “You need to sleep.”

“Nah, I’m close to finished, anyway. Don’t wanna leave it like it is.” 

Riku poured himself a cup of tea from the pot on the stove, and he noticed that Cid’s eyes were ringed in deep, puffy shadows as he started towards the pantry. 

“Besides, it’s dinner time,” Cid said.

“Breakfast,” Leon corrected dryly. “You’re making breakfast.” 

“S’what I said,” Cid mumbled from the pantry. “Hey, you seen my apron?”

Leon settled across from Riku at the table. “Nope,” he said, and he turned to Riku. “You just missed Aerith. She’s got a few new donations from up the hill. Think you could collect them?”

“Sure,” Riku said.

“It’s a lot of books,” Leon added casually. “Maybe you should take Sora.”

Riku twisted the string of his tea bag around his finger and tugged it, then glanced up. “Okay,” he said.

Leon looked quietly pleased, and he raised his mug. “Good,” he said, “because none of us managed to drag him out of bed.”

* * *

Sora stretched his arms as far as they would reach into the pale morning sky, folding one over the other with a jaw-cracking yawn. One hand strayed into Riku’s field of vision and bumped him on the temple, and Riku gave him a quick, gentle shove. Sora staggered with an exaggerated groan.

“Watch it, sleeping beauty,” Riku teased.

“I can’t help it,” Sora groused. “People aren’t supposed to be awake this early.”

He gravitated back in Riku’s direction with a huff, his glassy eyes on the road ahead. They kept on their way, climbing the hill into Radiant Garden’s inhabited district, where shutters were starting to open and cook-fire chimneys were starting to smoke. Riku had never been in this part of town before, and he tried to admire the spring flowers and the linens drifting on outdoor lines without wondering for too long if it was habitable _because_ he had never been here.

They climbed a short step into a small square with a trickling stone fountain in its center, where a handful of kids were enthusiastically sprinting after one another, makeshift capes trailing behind and improvised tree-branch swords brandished ahead. 

Sora watched them quietly as they passed by, and something conflicted and unfamiliar flickered across his face. 

Riku suddenly felt the distance between them as if it were vast and plunging. “Hey,” he started, nudging him again, “you can go back to the cottage if you’re really too tired to haul books, you know.”

Sora glanced up. “Huh? Uh, no, it’s—it’s not— _oomph!”_

A twin-tailed girl collided with Sora’s legs as they turned the corner, and Riku rushed forward to catch him under the arms as he staggered back.

The girl sprinted onward without so much as a backward glance, Riku was watching her go when Sora suddenly jostled in his arms, pointing excitedly out into the town common. 

“Riku, look!” he said, and Riku hauled Sora back to his feet before he could topple them both over.

Families and shopkeepers were scattered around the low brick wall bordering the commons, each pitching a stall and laying out their wares in orderly rows or towering pyramids. The twin-tailed girl and her ragtag band of caped crusaders sprinted excitedly between the stalls, and a handful of other children busied themselves with games or trailed after their parents with arms full, if they were unlucky. 

Riku stared out into the throngs of people, cemented where he stood. He had never seen this many of Radiant Garden’s residents in one place, and a profound unease settled in his gut as he realized, silently, that he was an intruder.

“Riku?” Sora said gently, and Riku came back into himself, glancing down at the brush of a hand curling into his sleeve. 

“It’s just,” he said stiffly, “crowded.”

Sora was quiet for a moment, then grabbed Riku by the hand and pulled him out into the common.

He twisted, clasping Riku’s hand between both of his. “The town’s healing,” he said. “The people, too.” A touch of color rose in his cheeks, and he smiled. “So can you.”

It was a mercy when Sora turned away, because Riku couldn’t have hoped to stifle the lovesick expression on his face.

“Hey,” Sora called to a passing stranger, “is it market day?”

The stranger peered around his tower of apples, a basket over each shoulder, and he wobbled precariously as his glasses slipped down his nose. “This afternoon ’n tomorrow, if the weather keeps,” he answered gruffly.

“Need a hand?”

Before he had a chance to answer, Sora had taken up a basket, and Riku followed closely behind as they made their way to a cart on the far side of the common, where a put-upon woman with a haphazard bun was was carefully peeling price tags from a round-faced little girl who had somehow managed to plaster them all over herself.

The woman greeted them warmly, brushing the straying locks of hair from her face with the back of a hand, and Riku knelt at the girl’s side to try to hold her attention. She fanned pudgy, price-stickered fingers out in front of him.

“Careful—” the woman warned, but both of the girl’s tiny hands had already fallen on Riku’s cheeks, and she plastered three of the brightly-colored tags to his face, one of them snagging in his hair, before he righted himself.

Sora laughed, a bright, shimmering sound. He reached up to Riku’s face and swept back his hair to roll the edge of a sticker under his fingertips.

His smile seemed to stretch back through years, through a thousand familiar smiles and the patchwork of impressions they had etched into Riku’s heart.

“What a steal,” he said.

 _I have to tell him,_ Riku thought, and he felt like he’d swallowed a firework. _Today._

  
  


The donor was a kind, squat man with a bristly mustache who seemed immensely grateful just to have someone take the books away. “I would move ‘em or sell ‘em myself,” he told them in a raspy, good-humored drawl as they loaded the books into bags, “if it weren’t for this damned weak hip…”

He offered them a glass of water, and then a cup of tea, and then a modest lunch, and the morning slowly bloomed into afternoon. Riku must have counted every one of Sora’s freckles, but he couldn’t have recalled a word of what they said in those hours. In the end, the donor sent them off with the two brimming canvas bags and a deep wicker basket they could carry between them, and by the time they arrived at the library they were both out of breath and shining with sweat.

Sora and Aerith worked on unpacking the basket, but Riku skirted around the shelves and found Leon at the table under the stairs, a curling stack of blueprints draped over the table.

“Leon,” Riku asked tentatively, “could you switch me to tonight’s patrol?” 

Leon looked up from the blueprints, and he held Riku’s eye for a searching moment. “Sora’s on tonight’s patrol,” he said.

A nervous flutter rolled through Riku’s stomach, and he swept a hand unconsciously over the nape of his neck. He glanced across the library, where Sora was cheerfully piling books into Aerith’s arms.

“He is,” Riku agreed.

A small, warm smile rose on Leon’s face, and Riku was struck by how familiar it had become.

“Not much going on tonight,” Leon said. “Don’t feel like you need to hurry back.”

* * *

Taking a walk seemed like an exceptional idea when he returned to the cottage, buoyed by an unfamiliar certainty. Sunset was still a few hours off, the committee had mostly disbursed for assignments, and Riku was buzzing with heightened energy. He set off towards the ravine, hoping the quiet stillness of the cliffs and valleys would help him settle his nerves. A meandering breeze swept through the streets, the heat of the afternoon blunted but not yet burned away.

An hour’s walk turned into two, and then into a light jog, and then into circling the block as the sun leaned towards the horizon. He realized belatedly that three hours was at least three hours too many to spend peacefully contemplating the reality of confessing after a decade of white-knuckled secrecy, and shortly after realized that the moments he had left to believe his own denial were dwindling—and the moments left to twist himself into knots were dwindling, too.

He wasn’t sure what driving internal force had taken the reins, but by the time he finally climbed the arching stone path to the bailey, it felt like his mind was chasing so many threads simultaneously that it might as well have been static snow. He was almost dizzy from it as he stepped into the cool shade of the overhang.

The sky beyond bailey was stained in golden orange as the sun disappeared, the sparse cloud cover dyed an idyllic lavender. Riku’s thought dimmed to muted noise and he slowed to a stop, catching his breath on the back of his tongue.

Leaning into the stone wall, his arms crossed beneath him, was Sora. The breeze stirred the wild sweep of his chestnut hair, his head tilted dreamily to the side as he took in the deepening sky.

Riku could still turn back. He could still retreat to the cottage, tell Leon he’d changed his mind. He could still spend the rest of his life running, trying to carve away the piece of his heart that wanted too much, that wanted everything.

There was a thrum beneath his skin, something desperate, and thrilling, and alive. He could feel the thread that bound his heart still pulling, stronger now than before, drawing him gently, insistently over the threshold.

As if he could feel the same pull, Sora turned. His sky-blue eyes were mellowed by the evening light, framed by a galaxy of sun-darkened freckles.

A wide, vibrant smile blossomed across his face. 

“Hey,” he said. 

Riku took a step, and another. “Hey,” he said.

Sora tipped his head in the direction of the castle. “So…?”

Riku made a sweeping gesture towards the steps, and his answering smile felt huge and ridiculous. “After you.”

Unlike Riku’s first excursion into this part of the city, no swarm of stray heartless disrupted the quiet, no sudden skittering in the stone cliffside broke their stride. They walked a comfortable distance apart. Their footsteps didn’t align and fall into sync. Their hands hung at their sides, and they didn’t brush.

The door of the castle had been repaired, the fallen pillar cleared away. Sora slipped a Restoration Committee badge from his pocket and swiped it, and the door slid open without much fuss.

As they turned into the study, Riku hesitated. For a moment, he hovered at the door, taking in the deeply familiar face that towered over the room: one he knew, and that knew him. His face, in another life.

He wouldn’t forgive, and he wouldn’t forget; but he would grow, and as long as there was still work to be done, he would rise to meet it.

The panel in the wall slid open, and Sora turned to look back at him with a smile. “You coming?” he said.

Riku returned it, and they left the study and the portrait both behind.

The doors into the console room functioned the way they were supposed to; the console itself had been painstakingly reassembled, the keys on the dashboard replaced and the monitors dark and unbroken. Sora shut the door behind them, testing the mechanism, and Riku circled the console and flipped the switch beneath the keyboard.

Something glinted in the corner of his eye, and he blinked, stifling a laugh. 

He stooped down and picked up Leon’s coin, turning it over in his hand. It must have been there for weeks.

“All set?” Sora asked.

Riku straightened, pocketing the coin. “Yeah,” he said. “The console seems fine.” He squeezed around the cool metal, the solidity reassuring.

“Sora,” he started, and he was surprised at the steadiness of his voice. “Could we…go somewhere? To talk?”

Sora’s eyes widened. He glanced around the room, then looked back to Riku curiously. 

Riku swallowed the manic laughter that tickled the back of his throat. “Somewhere else,” he clarified.

Sora looked thoughtful for a moment, then suddenly lit up. “I know where we can go,” he said, and he swiped his keycard and started towards the study. “Come on, I wanna show you something.”

Sora led him back out to the postern, where the sky was turning deep indigo. He came to a sudden halt, scrutinizing the towering stone cliffs that propped up the looming structure of the castle.

He wandered over to the cliff face, standing on his toes, then huffed in determination and started to scramble up a pile of stones, clawing his way onto a wide copper pipe.

“Where exactly are you taking me?” Riku asked incredulously.

“Come on, slowpoke!” Sora called, then mumbled to himself, “I know it’s around here _somewhere…”_

Riku trailed after him, and he could hear the shuffle and clatter of shifting stone above him as he climbed delicately up the rock formation. 

“Ha!” Sora exclaimed, and he turned back to Riku, his face bright with enthusiasm. “Found it,” he said. 

Riku took a step, and Sora held out a hand to stop him.

“Wait,” he said, and Riku waited.

He caught a disarming flash of teeth as Sora bit his lip. “Close your eyes,” he said.

He almost protested—almost teased—but there was something shy and imploring in the lilt of Sora’s voice, and his heartbeat drowned out the thought. 

He closed them. 

Riku felt the gentle tug of Sora’s hand, guiding him forward. In the dark, the flutter of the pulse in Sora’s wrist and the tentative sound of Sora’s voice reached him: “Okay, forward a little… _stop,_ and—here, there’s a step down—just like that—okay, now forward…a little more, a little more…”

Their footsteps began to echo, Sora’s voice expanding into some vast, unseen space, and the ambient babble of running water over stone filled the air. Riku set one tentative foot after the other, and he suddenly felt the warmth of Sora’s body growing closer as he took one final step, and stopped. 

“Okay,” Sora murmured, “you can open them.”

Sora’s eyes were on him, wide and shining, and he was bathed in an otherworldly, lilac-tinted blue. The glow cast over his face and caught in his hair, and Riku gazed around them in awe. 

It was a towering stone cavern, massive pillars descending from above and rising from below; a long expanse of cliff stretched out ahead, overlooking the depths of the cave. In every crevice and jutting from every corner were outcrops of luminescent crystal, and countless narrow, glittering waterfalls captured and refracted a rippling illumination over the cave walls.

“How…” Riku asked, his astonished whisper carrying into the expanse, “how did you _find_ this place?”

Sora shrugged, staring out across the cavern. “Long story,” he said.

Riku turned back to him, and the world outside had never felt so far away. 

“Can we sit?” he asked softly.

His eyes were open, but Sora still guided him by the hand. They settled across from each other on the crop of cool stone, legs crossed.

Riku kept his eyes on their overlapping hands, and he knew they were shaking. Even now—even with everything growing inside him—he felt braver with Sora’s hands in his. 

He started speaking before he knew the shape of the words, and trusted he would find them on the way.

“I…I never knew how to tell you,” he said, and the waver in his voice melted into the echo around them. “For years, I tried to outrun it, or talk myself out of it, or force it down, but…” he shook his head. “The harder I tried, the more lost I got. And the more lost I got, the more I believed I didn’t deserve to come back. And in the end, the only way out was to listen for your voice and to…to come home to you.”

Sora was sitting perfectly still. He knew, even in the dark, that Sora was holding every word in his chest. 

“I thought I could change it,” Riku whispered, and he lifted his gaze. “But I couldn’t—”

Sora looked up at him, something startled and bottomless in his eyes, and Riku felt the stone beneath him fall away.

“I couldn’t stop loving you,” he finished, and he looked down again, a swell of doubt rising in him. “I know you don’t feel the same,” he said, “but I—I want you to know that I don’t need anything to change. All I want is for you to—to still love me the way you do, and—”

The thought was cut short when Sora clamped a hand over his mouth.

For a moment, Riku only sat, stunned into stasis.

“Riku,” Sora started, “you lived with this inside you for _years_ and…never…?” 

Riku felt his face go hot under Sora’s fingers, and he shut his eyes, the humiliation overwhelming him.

The hand slid tentatively from Riku’s mouth along the line of his jaw until it rested at the hollow behind his ear. Sora’s fingertips stirred the wisps of hair at the base of his scalp, and he shivered.

Riku opened his eyes, terrified of what he might see, but he didn’t have time to see anything at all before Sora pulled him forward and kissed him.

The press of his mouth was gentle and sure. His fingers trembled where they were curled at the back of Riku’s neck. 

He drew back by a fraction, his breath ghosting over Riku’s cheek. When the world didn’t collapse, Sora leaned forward again, this time with a tentative but insistent intention of his shoulders behind it.

Sora’s lips brushed his, parted, and Riku’s head finally caught up with him.

He startled back. “Sora,” he whispered, his voice rasping, “you…”

“Yeah,” Sora breathed, and a flicker of uncertainty passed over his face. He shuffled forward and bit his lip, tugging nervously at the wisps of Riku’s hair. “Is…is this okay?”

Riku stared at him. The thrum under his skin was thundering, wild, and he was shaking from it. 

Something gave in Riku, something old and storm-weathered, and the constant current of his heart came pouring out into Sora’s hands.

He scrambled on the stone, rising on his knees, his arms finding Sora’s waist. Sora’s arms wrapped around his neck, and their noses collided inelegantly between them as they learned, desperate and graceless, the shape of their hearts in tune.

After some unfathomable stretch of time, reality returned to them. They realized, collectively, that it was uncomfortable to kiss someone until your mind was half-gone while you were kneeling on bare rock. They realized that it was awkward and surreal to blink against the lashes of someone who had held you countless times stretching back as far as you could remember, and suddenly not know where to put your hands, or your eyes, or your mouth.

There was a clumsy, shuffling process of knees knocking and delirious giggling and Riku’s untamable hair catching between their parted lips. There was a wobble and a muted shout as Sora started to tip over, and a moment of gasping reprieve as they collapsed, reached, readjusted.

Lying side-by-side on the sprawling stone, the giggling and grinning died away. Their fingers tangled in between them, and Sora didn’t still until his mouth was pressed firmly to Riku’s forehead, unwilling to relinquish the connection for so much as a second.

In that cool, faintly-lit liminal space, with the shape of each word traced into the curve of Riku’s brow, Sora whispered confession after confession of his own: all the things he never expected to have, the distant horizons of a strange new universe, and the joy—world-shaking, boundless joy.

His fingertips trailed Riku’s cheek, and Riku blinked, surprised to find that his vision was blurred with tears.

“You okay?” Sora whispered, and Riku captured Sora’s hand against the corner of his mouth and brushed his lips over the crease of his palm.

“Yeah,” he murmured, “I really, really am.”

* * *

“Are you sure about this?”

Riku’s hands found the dial of the lantern in the dark and twisted it, and a soft golden light swelled under Sora’s chin, making him look almost comically doubtful. One of Riku’s knees knocked into the lid of the toilet as he tried to make space for Sora to inch forward. 

“You don’t have to keep asking,” he whispered.

Sora’s voice rose a fraction. “I just—what if I mess it up?”

There was a muffled shifting sound through the wall, where Aerith and Yuffie had long since fallen asleep, and they froze. When it settled back into silence, Riku leaned forward in his chair. 

“It grows back. That’s the whole idea.”

Sora knelt, his fingertips sweeping Riku’s face as they parted his bangs. He held the kitchen scissors awkwardly out over the sink, as if he was afraid they would bite. “Fine,” he muttered, “but you have to close your eyes. I don’t want you judging me.”

Riku rolled his eyes. He closed them.

He felt the warmth of gentle hands settle on the sides of his face, and then the hesitant touch of a kiss on the soft corner of his mouth, and his breath caught.

“You’re really sure?” Sora whispered. “Promise you won’t be mad if it’s awful?”

Riku leaned forward until he felt the brush of Sora’s nose against his. “Swear,” he said. 

Sora’s answering sigh stirred the forest of Riku’s bangs, and he pressed another quick kiss to his lips before he rose. The kitchen stool they’d dragged into the bathroom made it almost impossibly small, and Sora had to lean into Riku’s shoulder and squeeze, giggling, around the curve of the sink before he could stand flush against Riku’s back.

Riku tipped his head back into Sora’s chest, a shiver rolling through him at the tug of Sora’s fingers combing through the ocean of his hair.

He smiled at the ceiling. “I trust you, Sora.”

* * *

When they stumbled bleary-eyed into the kitchen on their last morning in Radiant Garden, Cid was already heating an iron skillet over the stove. He looked even worse than Riku felt; the shadows under his eyes were dark and sunken, and he worked with a vague, glassy gaze fixed on the wall.

Sora collapsed onto a stool, tugging drowsily on the hem of Riku’s shirt until he settled at Sora’s side.

“When was the last time you slept?” Riku asked.

“Oh, y’know,” Cid answered vaguely, and he turned to slide a pair of mugs across the table. Riku caught them both, since Sora’s reflexes were apparently still loading. Cid lifted a steaming coffee pot from the counter and offered it, and Riku raised his mug. Cid poured until it was brimming, and Riku had to interject to make sure it didn’t spill over. 

“Where is everyone?” he asked, and Sora leaned lazily into his shoulder. 

“Oh, y’know,” Cid said. 

“They’re picking up some things at the market,” came Leon’s voice, and he wandered out of Cid’s room with his logbook tucked under one arm. He approached the counter and reached around Cid to pour himself a cup of coffee, then drew back a hand and gave him a quick, casual smack on the rear.

Cid jumped like a startled rabbit. He brandished the spatula in Leon’s direction, blinking away a disoriented haze. “Fer two weeks you insist on sleepin’ head-to-foot, and now you wanna spank me in fronta guests?” he snapped.

Leon carefully extracted the spatula from Cid’s hand. “Go to bed,” he said. 

Sora suddenly burst into laughter, and he pointed breathlessly in Cid’s direction. Cid twisted, tugging the apron to get a better look, and Riku nearly inhaled his mouthful of coffee.

On the back of Cid’s apron, hastily embroidered in blocky, lopsided letters, were the words _SLAP THE COOKS ASS._

Cid’s expression was frozen in confusion, then turned stormy. “Yuffie,” he muttered, and it came out like a curse.

“Go to bed,” Leon repeated, more firmly this time.

“Really, Cid, go,” Riku added. “Sora and I can take care of breakfast.”

Cid tugged the apron over his head, grumbling to himself. He shoved it into Leon’s arms and disappeared into his room, the door clicking shut behind him.

“I’ve got a few things to pick up, too,” Leon said. “You might wanna make extra. We won’t be long.” He gave Riku a quick once-over, then a small smile. “Looks good,” he said, and Riku’s hand went instinctively to his hair.

“Thanks,” Sora said with a grin, and Leon turned to him in surprise.

He glanced between the two of them, then quirked an eyebrow at Riku. 

“Shut up,” Riku mumbled, his face warming.

When Leon was gone, Riku dragged Sora out of his chair and parked him at the counter, taking up Cid’s half-prepped cutting board full of potatoes. He gave Sora a gentle nudge as he stared miserably at the spread before them.

“Start cracking eggs, slacker.”

Sora sighed, pulling a massive bowl against his chest and wrapping an arm around it. He started methodically cracking eggs into the brim, tossing the shells one after another into the sink.

“Riku,” he said after a moment of quiet work, “do you…wanna tell our friends?”

Riku carved the eye off a potato. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I mean, I told the person I needed to tell. What do you think?”

“Leon knows,” Sora said plainly.

Riku fought down a laugh. “Yeah,” he said, “he definitely does.”

Sora swore under his breath as the egg in his hands cracked sideways, a slop of shell-speckled whites spilling into the bowl. He pulled a clean spatula from the wall rack and started to fish it out. “I think…I think I might want this to be just ours for now, y’know?” he said, and he paused to peer into the bowl, a flush of color drowning out his freckles. He inched over, one tiny step at a time, until he bumped gently into Riku’s side.

“I want you to myself a little longer,” he said quietly, and Riku had to set down the knife just to let his body adjust to the rapid expansion of his heart. He turned to press his forehead to Sora’s temple, his eyes squeezed shut. 

“Sounds good to me,” he said.

Sora swore again, and Riku opened his eyes. “Did you ruin another egg?” he said.

“You don’t get to complain,” Sora pointed out. “ _You’re_ the one who volunteered us.”

“Trade with me,” Riku said. “At this rate, those’ll be more shell than egg.”

They switched places, and Sora took up the cutting board and started cubing.

“I figure this is the least we can do after everything they’ve done for us,” Riku said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m about as ready for an exam as I’m ever going to be.”

Sora froze mid-chop, his face suddenly blank. “I…I haven’t even been thinking about the exam.”

“You—” Riku doubled over the counter, a fit of giggles overtaking him until he was out of breath, until it ached. “You haven’t been _thinking_ about it? Sora, you’ve been _training_ for it.”

Sora straightened up indignantly, his face flushing. “I-I’ve been—” he gestured vaguely but emphatically at Riku with his free hand. “—you know, distracted!”

Riku brushed the tears from his eyes and tried to catch his breath. “I worry about you sometimes.”

Sora punched him playfully on the arm. “It’s not _my_ fault all my brain space was busy with a gorgeous idiot!”

“‘Gorgeous’?” Riku repeated, cracking a wide, delirious grin. “You think I’m _gorgeous?”_

Sora turned a shade redder, his expression warring between a pout and a grin. “Fine, I take it back—you’re a _bridge troll._ An unfairly tall, unfairly muscular bridge troll.”

They managed a mountain of scrambled eggs and homefries without burning anything down, and Riku was scraping the last of the charred potatoes from the bottom of the skillet when Aerith, Yuffie, and Merlin shuffled in the door, their arms overflowing with offerings: ripe peaches, two golden loaves of bread, and a fragrant bouquet of ivy and wildflowers.

Merlin busied himself with a pot of tea, laying out an assortment of herbs and berries, and they had just made room for everything on the table when Leon returned, followed closely by Tifa and Cloud. 

They dragged chairs, passed around teacups, and arranged space for yet more contributions—fresh greens, cheese, a jar of preserves—and before they knew it Cid was stumbling out of his bedroom while Leon and Tifa rolled a spare table into the kitchen from Merlin’s study, much to his put-upon grumbling.

They argued, spilled preserves, and Cid dejectedly handed Aerith his apron and asked if she could fix it, to which she responded with a beaming smile while Yuffie laughed herself sick across the table.

Riku’s hair must have weighed more heavily on him than he realized, because with most of it gone every turn of his head felt impossibly light and unimpeded. He laughed freely and ate well, and at his side, below the level of the bench, Sora’s fingers were threaded through his. For once, for a moment, everything was right—even Riku.

* * *

Riku braced the Way to the Dawn as Sora swung lightning-quick in his direction, the force of the impact sending tremors up his arms. He held firm and doubled down, the space between them decreasing in increments, the glinting V of their crossed blades framing Sora’s broad smile.

“That the best you can do?” Riku said.

Sora thrust out with the full force of his arm, knocking him back. “You wish!”

“Alright then,” he said, dropping into a defensive stance, “show me what you got.”

Sora grinned at him. “My pleasure,” he said, and before the last word was out of his mouth, he lunged.

Riku steeled his blade again, but Sora was already flipping Oathkeeper behind him and dropping to the ground. He skidded along the cobblestone, striking for Riku’s knee with one leg to sweep his feet out from under him.

Riku reeled forward, and Sora swung Oathkeeper around and smacked him on the back of the head, tipping him unceremoniously over.

Riku caught himself with his free hand just before colliding with the ground. He held himself there, torso parallel with the dusty brick, his keyblade tucked at the small of his back. 

“Oh, now you’re just showing off,” Sora complained. 

Riku laughed. He rolled himself onto his back, offering his palms in surrender, and held one out to Sora. He reached for it, their hands locking at the wrist. 

Riku’s grin turned wolfish. _“Graviza,”_ he said, and he swept the Way to the Dawn behind Sora’s shoulders.

His feet spun out from under him, and he clutched at Riku’s wrist with a startled yelp, peddling his legs as they turned up in the air. His necklace swung down and smacked him on the mouth.

He blinked down at Riku, his face now upside-down and flushed with embarrassed fury.

“You—you _jerk,_ that’s _so_ not fair!”

Riku rose to his feet, then released Sora’s wrist with a smirk, and Sora scrambled at his arm in a panic. 

Riku choked back a laugh, a rush of affection sweeping through him. “You look like a balloon,” he said, and he uncurled the hand by Sora’s face, as if to demonstrate.

Sora slowly released his iron grip on Riku’s wrist. Other than a slight drift in the breeze, he stayed steadily in the localized field that Riku had cast.

“Oh,” Sora said sheepishly, and he reached for Riku again. “C’mon, let me down.” 

Riku caught his outstretched fingers, and Sora twisted in the air, turning himself over like an acrobat in slow-motion. Riku’s hands slid along Sora’s arms until they could support him at the shoulder, and then he murmured a few soft words, and Sora’s full weight dropped out of the air.

Riku caught him seamlessly, and Sora grabbed at his shoulders and squeezed. For a minute, Riku couldn’t tell whose heartbeat was whose.

He loosened his grip, and Sora’s face slid into focus, his cheeks pinked and his eyes shining. He glanced from Riku’s eyes to his mouth and back again, and his nose brushed the curve of Riku’s cheek as he leaned forward, stealing Riku’s breath as he went.

A burst of breeze swept over them, the steady whirring of a warm engine drowning out Riku’s pulse, and Sora was suddenly scrambling up him like a tree, waving frantically with one hand. 

“Hey, hey!” Riku complained, and he struggled to let Sora down without the both of them collapsing.

Sora took off towards the gummi ship, and Riku watched as it came to rest against the cobblestone and gradually powered down, the hatch popping open with a hiss. 

Goofy dropped out of the cockpit first, followed shortly after by Donald, and Sora was wrapped up in their arms within moments. Riku dismissed his keyblade and followed close behind.

“How’dya do?” Goofy implored, squeezing Sora until he lifted off the ground. “Are ya Keyblade Masters yet?”

“We can’t stay long,” Donald hastened to add. “We’re already running behind schedule. We need to get you to Yen Sid.”

“We’re packed,” Riku said. “I’ll grab my bags.”

Goofy set Sora back on the ground. “Say, Riku,” Goofy said, “you get a haircut?”

Riku colored, his hand finding the back of his neck. He curled his fingers through it. “Yeah,” he said, and he glanced at Sora out of the corner of his eye. “It was time for a change.”

  
  


Riku slung his duffel over his shoulder and flicked off Aerith’s bedside lamp, glancing around the room that had been his for just a moment in time, and he knew he would miss it. As he passed the dresser, he paused to glance into the mirror, sweeping his bangs thoughtfully into place. 

It was nice to see clearly for once.

He made his way to the kitchen, where their extravagant breakfast and much more modest lunch had long since transformed into a tower of dishes. Aerith’s bouquet was still overflowing from a porcelain vase on the kitchen table, and Riku noticed that Cid’s apron was back on its hook over the pantry door, a floral pattern poking out from one of the folds.

Riku drew it curiously back, and he shook his head with a snort. Yuffie’s blocky mess was long gone; now, lovingly embroidered in an elegant, curling script and framed in a simple wreath of herbs, were the words _Slap the Cook’s Ass._

Leon passed by with Sora’s trunk in one hand. “Cid was thrilled,” he said, and he paused at the table, setting the trunk against the wall.

Riku grinned. “I’ll bet.”

“Before you go,” Leon started, “I have something for you.”

He rifled in his pockets and held out a familiar-looking badge. Riku took it, reading the inscription printed over sunset-tinted illustration: 

_Radiant Garden Restoration Committee Honorary Member._

Riku swallowed, surprised at the sudden burn of tears behind his eyes. He blinked them back. “Thank you,” he said. “Really. For everything.”

“You’re one of us now,” Leon said simply. “If you ever need anything—a place to stay, another pair of hands, someone to talk to—you’re always welcome here. Sora, too.” Leon smiled, offering him a quick squeeze on the shoulder. “Oh—and I asked Cloud on tonight’s patrol.”

Riku chuckled. “Finally giving up the celibate life?” he said. “Yuffie would be so proud.”

Leon took up the trunk. “Your ride’s waiting,” he said, and he shook his head in exasperation, the shell of his ear turning pink where it poked from the mahogany sheen of his hair. “No respect for your elders...”

As they stepped out into the square, Sora came sprinting in their direction. Riku froze, utterly unprepared to catch him—but Sora threw himself at Leon, laughing as he wrapped around Leon’s shoulders like a koala.

Leon dropped the trunk with a thud and a startled curse. He wobbled for a moment, then righted himself with a weary sigh.

“Was that really necessary?” he asked, the words strained.

“You didn’t drop me,” Sora said with a smug grin, and Leon abruptly dropped him.

“Go on, both of you,” he muttered. “It’ll be nice to have some peace and quiet around here for once.”

The Restoration Committee was waiting at the ship, and goodbyes were a slow affair made even slower by Sora’s need to hug every single one of them. Riku settled for a friendly handshake from Cid and a warm pat on the back from Merlin, and Yuffie cheerfully pulled a punch to his gut when he offered her hand.

“Expect the unexpected,” she reminded him with a grin.

He thanked Aerith profusely for the use of her room, and she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

When Sora had finished his second round of hugs, they finally piled into the gummi ship and pulled the hatch. Riku’s ears popped as the cabin pressurized, and he glanced out at the Committee, clustered together and waving in front of the cottage.

He caught Leon’s eye, and Leon offered him a two finger salute and a genuine smile.

They were reduced to ants, then specks, then sweeping landscape as the gummi ship left the world behind.

* * *

Riku was struck every time by the sheer stillness of the cosmos, by just how distant and alien even the nearest star must be. Donald and Goofy hovered over the dashboard, making final preparations to start a course.

“Happy faces,” Donald reminded them absently as he entered a string of numbers from the crumpled letter taped to the hatch glass. 

Riku leaned back into his seat, pulling in a long, slow breath. All that was bound to come suddenly felt overwhelmingly close. Although the darkness had seemed to quell again, he had no illusions that the balancing act was over, or that he could handily unspool what had seeded so deeply into his heart. He would carry darkness, and all that entailed, and it would be a tightrope that defined his life. 

Even…even with love.

He glanced to his side, where Sora was gazing out into the great unknown. No trace of fear or reservation colored his expression. Sora would charge ahead, bend destiny to his will through sheer determination.

How much had changed in just a handful of days. How little.

“No horizons out here,” Sora murmured. “We can go anywhere now. Anywhere in the _universe.”_

His mouth fell suddenly open, his breath catching, and Riku looked back out at the endlessness of space just in time to catch the glittering streak of a meteor trailing like a smear of fire across the sky. 

Their fingers caught between them, and Riku felt that tug again: a murmuring vibration along an anchoring, familiar thread.

“Sora?”

He looked up, and Riku felt the gravity at the center of his universe shifting.

Riku squeezed his hand, and smiled. “You lead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y’all, if you made it all the way here, thank you, thank you, thank you for sticking with me to the end. this was first piece of fanfic ive written in close to a decade—the first piece of anything ive written in _three years_ —and the first KH fic I’ve written _ever._
> 
> This is such a deeply personal piece for me and I tucked a lot of myself into it, on top of easing back into creating for the medium that I know is closest to my heart. I have been blown away by the response, and I really and truly can’t thank you all enough for your support, encouragement, and enthusiasm. u can find me on twitter @ rikurespecter if u want—my WIPs collection is already stuffed to the brim, and I’ll be sporadically posting one-shots and short fic while I focus on the novel-length au in the works :) thank u especially to my beta ManaGummi (@ managummi on twitter) who has been supporting, editing, and cheering for me while i wrung this out of my gay ass heart. and thank u to @theFauxsynder on twitter for the [unbelievable art](https://twitter.com/TheFauxsynder/status/1269246690193821698) they created for for this chapter and for the fic, which continues to make me extremely weak. 
> 
> if this work meant something to you, please please leave kudos or a comment to let me know. It’s why I make things, and it means everything to me to know what I made reached someone, even in a small way.
> 
> please also [donate](https://twitter.com/starlinaxoxo/status/1267206627750363137) in support of the Black Lives Matter movement if you can spare it, or [sign a petition](https://twitter.com/solaceil/status/1268034886385799168) if you can't.
> 
> Most listened albums during the writing of this fic:  
>  _Everybody Works_ — Jay Som  
>  _Clean EP_ — The Japanese House  
>  _Vagabon_ — Vagabon


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